The Ubuntu Developer Summit, an biannual event at which members of the Ubuntu development community gather to lay out a roadmap for the next version of the Linux distribution, will take place next week in Florida. As usual, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth will start the event with a keynote.

According to an early report from ZDNet, Shuttleworth will announce plans to bring Ubuntu to smartphones and tablet computing devices. The company says that it has been discussing the plan with hardware partners for the past 18 months. No specific hardware vendors have been named yet and there is presently no concrete timeline for product availability.

Canonical’s focus for the first half of 2012 will be stabilization and improving the platform for the enterprise desktop. As we previously reported, Ubuntu 12.04—scheduled for release in April—will offer an extended long-term support period for business users. After the 12.04 release, the focus will reportedly shift towards mobile.

Ubuntu’s new Unity shell will play a key role in Canonical’s plans to bring the Ubuntu user experience to smaller screens. The platform already has preliminary tablet support, including experimental functionality for touchscreen-based window management. It seems likely that the Qt-based Unity 2D experience will serve as the mobile implementation. The Qt Quick user interface design framework is well-suited for building touch-friendly mobile experiences.

Although few details about the Ubuntu mobile platform are available now, more information will likely surface on Monday during Shuttleworth’s talk at the Ubuntu Developer Summit.




Read the comments on this post

YouTube and Hollywood, which have been circling each other for years, are finally getting together.

But instead of moving movies and TV shows to the world’s biggest Web site, they’re trying something different: Google is handing out more than $100 million to dozens of partners to create new “channels.”

The idea is to make “professional” content that advertisers will pay a premium to be near, instead of the grab bag of videos that dominate the site and that often sell at very low prices.

This isn’t news, of course: YouTube reps have been holding meetings and auditions for most of the year, led by former Netflix executive Robert Kyncl. And we’ve known about the deal terms, and many of the partners, for some time.

But now the site is finally talking about them publicly and promising that it will start unveiling some of the new programming next month. Some of the channels — each of which will have a couple hours of original programming per week — will feature people you’ve heard of, like Madonna, Jay-Z,  Ashton Kutcher and “Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara.

But the channels aren’t all premised around the idea of celebrities and Hollywood per se — just the idea that someone with some idea of how to make good stuff will start making stuff specifically for the site.

For instance, BedRocket Properties, the video start-up backed by the Huffington Post’s Ken Lerer and run by cable TV veteran Brian Bedol, will do four channels, including a soccer-themed channel in conjunction with Major League Soccer, and an action sports channel produced along with Wasserman Media Group.

Another example: IGN, the videogame Web site being spun off by News Corp., will produce a game-themed channel along with the Shine Group, the TV production house recently purchased by News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

It’s worth noting that some of the channels will be run by people who are well-versed in creating Web video — and video for YouTube in particular. Machinima, for instance, which also specializes in game-themed stuff, is already one of YouTube’s most prolific partners, and essentially runs a network within YouTube’s network.

Maker Studios, which is producing three channels, is another outfit that already specializes in YouTube. And Demand Media went public this year, in part because it had figured out the art of cranking out Web videos very, very, quickly, at very, very low prices.

YouTube may not be releasing all of the channels and partners today, perhaps because it doesn’t actually have all of its deals signed yet. And at least one partner told me that some of the mechanics of the deals, like control of ad sales, had yet to be worked out.

That’s hard to imagine, given the amount of time that YouTube has been at this. But it’s also hard to imagine why you’d announce a big consumer-focused deal at the end of a Friday. So, who knows.

We do know the general outlines of the deals, though: Google will advance most of the creators up to $5 million, and in return will get commitments to produce a couple hours of programming a week for the channel. Once the programmers have earned back their advance from YouTube, they’ll split ad revenue with the site. The programming will be exclusive to YouTube for at least the first year of the three-year deals.

What we don’t know is how this stuff will actually work: $5 million won’t go very far if the partners use traditional TV and film budgets, so many of the partners are going to have to supplement that money with investments of their own — and they’re going to have to work on a tighter budget. And just because there’s a bit of Hollywood shine associated with this stuff doesn’t mean that people will actually watch — or, most crucially, that advertisers will pay up.

Google may also try other methods to get high-end video stuff. The company made a stab at Hulu when that video site was on the block. And it has indicated that it’s interested in licensing some content in international markets, where it thinks it can get more bang for its buck.

Our Apps Coverage is brought to you by Intel AppUp℠ center. Join the Intel AppUp℠ developer program to develop and sell your apps on the Intel AppUp℠ center.

Restaurant guide Zomato in a recent post on its blog has revealed that the highest user adoption for its mobile app comes from Blackberry users, followed by Android and iPhone. Zomato’s apps are also available on Nokia, Blackberry playbook and Samsung’s Smart TV devices. It also revealed platform wise analytics based on internal download and usage tracking data for daily downloads, average visits per months, time spent per visit, number of restaurants viewed per visit, reviews per visit, and average length of reviews.

The analytics indicate that a lifestyle app such as a food/restaurant guide like Zomato is popular in terms of downloads on Blackberry, which could also be because of the platform’s reach. Note that the entry price barrier for Blackberry devices is much lower compared with iOS. The cheapest Blackberry device costs less than Rs 10,000, while the cheapest iOS device costs around Rs 20,000. However, in terms of user engagement, iOS users are the most active and use the app more often, browsing more listings. We’re also assuming that Android is more popular than Nokia/Symbian since Zomato chooses to showcase numbers for the platform.

- Downloads per day: According to Zomato, the highest number of organic downloads i.e without counting ad links and app store promotions, come from Blackberry, followed by Android and iOS.

- Average visits per month: iOS users are the most active in terms of using the app, followed by Blackberry and Android.

- Time spent per month: Android users spend the highest amount of time browsing inside the app, followed by iOS and Blackberry, which implies that Blackberry users spend less time per visit.

- Number of restaurants viewed per visit: iOS users browse through more restaurants compared to Android and BlackBerry users. This also means that they choose or skip restaurants more quickly. Blackberry users browse less number of restaurants.

- Number of reviews per visit: iOS users tend to post more reviews, however, this analysis was relative and since Blackberry has the largest installed base, more reviews are posted by users of Blackberry devices.
*Reach India’s Digital Industry Decision Makers: Advertise on MediaNama. Contact sales@medianama.com. For more info, click here.

Despite advice to the contrary, Meg Whitman announced today that Hewlett-Packard will not spin off, sell off, fold, spindle, or mutilate the company’s Personal Systems Group, the division responsible for manufacturing PCs. Instead, PSG will remain part of the company, at least until such time as HP management changes their minds again.

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG,” Whitman said in a statement. “It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees. HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

After a couple months of waffling, the decision comes too late for the survivors of HP’s Palm acquisition. But despite the missteps of HP’s now-pilloried former chief executive Leo Apotheker, the Personal Systems Group has retained the lead in personal computer sales, with $40.7 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2010.





Read the comments on this post

Is the iPhone more data efficient than its Android rivals? Sprint CEO Dan Hesse says it is.

During an earnings call Wednesday, Hesse claimed iPhones use about half the network resources required by Android handsets, a feature that weighed heavily in the carrier’s decision to add Apple’s device to its portfolio.

“There is a misperception that our launch of the iPhone will increase the load on Sprint’s 3G network and require us to spend more 3G capital,” Hesse said. “The reverse is true. iPhone users are expected to use significantly less 3G than the typical user of a dual-mode 3G, 4G device. Even adjusting for more total new customers being added to the network, we believe they will put less load on our 3G network than they would have if we did not carry the iPhone.”

In other words, Sprint believes the iPhone is so data efficient that it will help the company continue to offer unlimited data plans for its smartphones — even following the debut of iCloud, whose services are presumably on the data-heavy side. Evidently, Apple’s strict network efficiency requirements, which prohibit apps from pinging networks as often as those on other operating systems, and the iPhone’s ability to quickly offload data onto Wi-Fi goes a long way toward reducing network congestion.

So the iPhone will likely be a big boon for Sprint, though one that’s not without risks. The carrier says the device’s benefits won’t exceed its costs until 2015. And in the meantime it may need $7 billion in new financing to cover up-front and network costs related to it.

The term “open source server” just
took on a whole new meaning. This morning at an event in New York,
Facebook director of hardware design and supply chain Frank
Frankovsky announced the creation of a foundation to guide the
Open Compute Project (OCP)—an
effort initiated by Facebook engineers to bring the benefits of
an open-source community to the problems faced in building
efficient “Web-scale” data centers. Facebook, Intel, AMD, and
Asus also have contributed intellectual property to the project,
including motherboard and blade server specifications.

The OCP was launched by engineers at
Facebook as a result of their experience in trying to build a
highly efficient data center in Prineville, Oregon. The
Prineville data center is the most efficient in the world in
terms of power consumption, using 38 percent less energy than
Facebook’s existing data centers and costing 24 percent
less. With a power usage effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.07, only
seven percent of the power brought into the facility is used in
the data center’s overhead and cooling. But getting there
required Facebook’s engineers to custom-design servers, power
supplies, battery backup systems, and server racks to accommodate
a simplified power distribution system—using 480 volt
distribution to reduce loss, rather than stepping it down—and
minimize cooling requirements.






Read the comments on this post

One of the most frequently asked (and smartest) questions about the supposedly forthcoming Apple television is: Why does it need to be an actual TV set? Why can’t it just be an accessory like today’s $99 Apple TV thing?
That line of thinking generally goes like this: If the Apple TV remains an inexpensive add-on device, more people could buy it for less money, and Apple could get more users. Then, in theory, it could potentially disrupt the TV industry — the content and distribution side, that is — more effectively.
Plus, who wants to buy another new TV already? Many people just bought one within a few years to upgrade to HD. And isn’t the TV itself just a giant monitor, which Apple’s software can easily take over via an external box? (You can listen to Instapaper’s Marco Arment articulate something along these lines in his most recent podcast episode.)
That’s a fine argument, and it has been a decent way for Apple to practice its living room “hobby” so far. But here’s why I think Apple will eventually make an actual television set:
Apple sells complete experiences, not just devices.
That’s everything from the box it comes in to the status and emotion that owning and using one of its products provides.
There’s not much special about plugging an Apple TV box or Blu-ray player or game console into your HDTV, turning the TV on with one (obnoxiously complex) remote control, toggling over to the right HDMI input, and then resuming with the Apple remote.
Watching Apple TV on an off-brand display is the equivalent of running Mac OS on a Dell laptop. It works, but it’s not as magical. Apple sort-of tried this with the Mac mini — hook up your old PC monitor, keyboard, and mouse to this tiny new Mac — but I don’t think it converted as many people to the Apple brand as, say, the cool all-in-one MacBook.
Apple wants to be your primary interface.
Right now, the Apple TV box is aiming for “input 2″ on your TV — most people still reserve “input 1″ for their cable or satellite box. (Believe it or not, the average American still watches more than 5 hours of TV per day.) If you have a game console, maybe Apple TV is even input 3 or 4 — if your TV even has that many hi-def inputs. This was smart on Apple’s part, because for most TV watchers, today’s Apple TV box is still only a part-time solution.
But long-term, Apple probably wants its TV platform to be “input zero.” That is, the first thing you see when you turn your TV on. The only thing you need to watch video, make FaceTime calls, download apps, play games, and maybe even use Siri to order a pizza. The only remote control you need. The heart and soul and brain of your living room.
Importantly, the opportunity is growing for Apple — and Google, Microsoft, and others — to become the primary TV interface, as more cable companies test and deploy IP-based TV service. (Meanwhile, the first Google TV device already aimed for “input 1″ and flopped. But it had a bunch of problems, not just being too early to market.)
Apple sells tightly integrated software, hardware, and services.
Let’s say Apple wants to enable FaceTime calls and Siri voice controls in the living room. Is it going to sell you an iSight camera/mic add-on to stick on top of your Vizio and run another cord into your Apple TV box? Is it going to rely on your having another camera and mic — say, on an iPhone or iPad — handy at all times?
Or is it going to make the most gorgeous HDTV imaginable with a built-in HD camera and amazing speakers? Over the long run, my bet is on the latter. It’s not like the 27-inch iMac is even very far away from that!
Selling TVs could be the better business.
Recall that Apple makes its profits by selling hardware, not by selling apps or iTunes rentals.
It may be harder and take longer for Apple to sell 10 million television sets at $1,000+ than 10 million set-top boxes for $100. But the opportunity for Apple to generate several hundred dollars in gross profit per device is greater than it is on the existing Apple TV, where profits are probably in the tens of dollars per device. (And competitors like Roku are driving market prices down.)
So far, the Apple TV set-top box is not enough of a business for Apple to even break it out as its own category. But selling high-end televisions could potentially become a multi-billion-dollar business for Apple.
Don’t expect anything crazy.
Expectations seem to be insanely high for this device, and they shouldn’t be. Apple rarely leapfrogs — it usually just makes great products using the Apple formula.
The iPod wasn’t actually that different of a concept than existing hard drive-based MP3 players — it just had a novel and simple user interface (the wheel), better software, a neat name, and Apple’s intangible cool-factor. The iPhone, yes, was a complete leapfrog. But the iPad mostly applied Apple’s formula to the tablet format that had existed for years.
An Apple television may not look or work that much different than today’s TVs. (Then again, it might — I have no idea.) But Apple’s combination of hardware design, software and platform depth, services like iCloud, a novel user interface like Siri, and the overall Apple experience could set it apart from today’s TVs.
And that’s what’s so attractive about the idea — and why I think Apple will eventually make an actual television, and not just more set-top boxes.
Previously: Here’s how Apple could finally put the “TV” in Apple TV

Kiran Bedi is indeed wrong, but when media persons sit to judge her it is a bit of a laugh. Clearly, they do not look in the mirror. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to question all sorts of voluntary agencies and their modus operandi, we have a situation where a person is pinned down for wrongdoing without a backward glance at how the whole NGO business works, often with the media’s involvement. Kiran Bedi has been fudging her bills, where she charged inflated amounts from her hosts. The main source was airline tickets. She would travel by economy class, that too at a discount because of her gallantry award, and charge business class fares. We now have these sanctimonious NGOs tell us that they took it at “face value”. Most NGOs send the tickets themselves. So, why did they let her use her travel agent? And what sort of auditing departments do they run? The reason for keeping quiet is not that they were afraid of Ms. Bedi’s wrath – they obviously did not mind shelling out Business Class fares – but because their finances will lead to many question marks. This is my point. The media and certain activists have taken a convenient yo-yo stand on the Jan Lokpal Bill campaign. They propped him up and were completely besotted by Team Anna. After they were done with the photo-ops of the caps and the fasting and dancing, they realised that there were chinks in the armour. No one was interested in the deeper questions – it came down to superficial put-downs. Let us get this fudging business clear. Kiran Bedi has admitted to it and says she will return the excess money that she wanted to use for her own NGO. Where do the NGOs get this kind of money that they can afford to invite people from different cities for seminars? I have often posed this query when we rubbish other institutions. Do you know that most of the activists themselves travel Business Class, stay at fancy hotels, and order the best food – for what? To gupshup about the state of the nation, the homeless, female foeticide, dowry, terrorism, communalism? Check out the number of people who have left their high-paying corporate and bureaucratic jobs to “serve the nation” or, “become useful members of society” or, “fight communalism”. They could do all of these by continuing to work. The reason is that activism has become a paying proposition. Have you seen the huge ads put up in newspapers inviting you to attend some conclave or the other? Is it affordable or even appropriate to shell out this kind of money on overheads? Besides government grants, there is a good deal of foreign sponsorship and donations from industrial houses. While the international ‘intervention’ often comes with some amount of side-effects (pushing of substandard products and services clubbed with the do-good, feel-good stuff), some of the Indian business black money that is not stashed away in banks abroad is routed to charitable organisation, with income tax exemption. Why does the media not raise a voice about this? Has the media ever questioned journalists who attend these same seminars? Oh yes, the same journalists who give inflated bills to their accounts departments for their travels and hotel stays and “related expenses”. Journalists who sit at the desk and make phone calls but charge taxi fare for the quotes. Journalists who try to get tickets and freebies because they think they are in a position to ‘arrange something’. Journalists who do not have to spend a paisa at restaurants and spas because they just might mention it, in passing, in their next column. Journalists who give us scoops that are fed to them by interested parties or who conduct sting operations that are again paid for by interested parties. Of course, it is not only the media at fault, but also those who host such talks. Corporate India’s ladies who lunch get a big high when they invite a person who can indeed talk and add to their resume. They flash such people as trophies to display their own worth as ‘aware citizens’. That some media people are doing their evening show with this group should be an eye-opener rather than a can-opener. If, as some commentators wish to know, why people from public office enter the fray late in the day to become part of NGOs, then one might wish to ask them why they have timed their queries now and not for all these years. Do they ponder about it when they go on government-sponsored junkets? The problem is that this whole Anna Hazare campaign has been a sham, and revealed more shams both on the inside as well as on the outside. It showed us how the ruling party and the opposition got to pay politics; the arrests also reveal a lot about those who got away without a scratch to their reputations. It is rather disingenuous of Digvijay Singh to say that if Kiran Bedi can offer to return the money, then every bribery case can be closed by saying the bribe-taker will return the money, including, A. Raja.This is some gumption. A minister in the government of India is caught in a scam of frightening proportions and another government person uses this as an analogy. He is also quite gung-ho about such a thing happening at the highest level. The 2G Spectrum scam is not just about bribes, but also about how the nation was taken for a ride with the government, big industrialists and lobbies involved. It is about how the government functions and not merely who took how much. This case has come under scrutiny; many others do not. If political agencies get a chance, they try to co-opt the activist groups. Most are willing to go along because it is the easy option. In some cases where they need the government to act, it does become a crucial mutual involvement. Therefore, if a political party invites activists, and they fudge figures about travel expenses, then what will the political parties do? Why not question the complete lack of balance by media groups? One can understand individual commentators taking a particular position, but why do they blatantly follow the newspaper/TV channel line? Where is their independence? Those who talk about objectivity should really look in their own backyards. There is favouritism everywhere and the media indulges in it as much as politicians, and the ‘activist’ role of the media should also come under scrutiny. Tavleen Singh, Indian Express columnist, while raising some important points, makes a rather shocking comment:“My own observation is that many NGOs working in India appear to be funded by organisations bent on ensuring that India never becomes a developed country… In order for India to become a halfway developed country, we need new roads, airports, ports, modern railways and masses more electricity. In addition, according to experts, we need 500 more cities by 2050. The odd thing is that the NGOs who oppose steel plants, nuclear power stations, dams and aluminum refineries in India never object to the same things in China.”Is this the definition of development, and the only model? As I have already said, many NGOs do have an agenda, but not only if they are funded by organisations that do not wish to see a developed India. By this logic, Gujarat should have no NGOs. And why must Indian NGOs object to what happens in China? Has the Indian government opposed the self-immolation of Tibetan monks and nuns in support of the Dalai Lama’s return? Has the BJP done so? Has the media done so? Forget the NGOs for a while. Think about how these plants were to come up, who was to be uprooted and how it would affect the environment. If this development is only for those setting up factories and making India technologically advanced, then why are we still the hub of western-powered outsourcing? Are the NGOs involved here? Why absolve the fat cats of business only to hit out at the NGOs unless they are specifically playing dirty? How many media people have taken free jet rides, attended fancy wedding functions abroad and written glowing accounts of them? Will they be sanctified as the facilitators of development? Or do they need to get closer to the seats of such power or perhaps such development? These are trick or treat queries. Ask them we must, for there is much beyond Kiran Bedi, whose banshee persona was in fact given a boost by the media when they needed her sound bytes. They were birds of a feather, until she was grounded. The still-feathered ones have taken wing and are giving us a bird’s eye-view. (c) Farzana VerseyAlso published in Countercurrents- - -My earlier related piece on such superficiality: Kiran's Dance, Illiteracy and Symbolism

Things are unquestionably messy for Netflix right now. It is losing subscribers. It is still in clean-up mode after a PR disaster. Its stock price is getting hammered. Is is making an expensive bet to grow overseas.
But despite all of this, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ master plan — to eventually kill the DVD and push his customers and Hollywood toward streaming video — is working.

Netflix said in its earnings Q3 report today that “only 7% of new streaming subscribers also currently sign up for DVD.” (Netflix doesn’t specify what percent of new subscribers are signing up for DVD-only plans, but I assume it’s very small.)
I have also broken down Netflix’s 23.8 million, end-of-Q3, U.S. subscribers by type. While 90% are streaming subscribers of some sort, only 58% are DVD subscribers of some sort. And it’s only been a few months since the big switch.
During the current quarter, the percentages will likely change further. Netflix is predicting a much sharper drop in its DVD subscriber base during Q4 (about 3 million, or ~20%) than its streaming base (about 700,000, or 3%).
“As of today, less than half of our streaming subscribers also subscribe to our DVD service, and we expect that number to continue to fall, given that only 7% of new streaming subscribers also currently sign up for DVD,” Netflix said in its quarterly letter to shareholders (PDF).
Hastings may have moved too fast, and Netflix may have scared its loyal customers with price increases and that whole “Qwikster” thing. But the big-picture shift seems to be working. Now it’s just going to take a while to clean everything up.
Related: 10 things to remember about Netflix while scratching your head about Qwikster

The New York Times has updated an article about the Steve Jobs biography:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the premise of “Angry Birds,” a popular iPhone game. In the game, slingshots are used to launch birds to destroy pigs and their fortresses, not to shoot down the birds.
(Via Francis Lam.)

Dag Kittlaus — the co-founder and CEO of the company that created the Siri voice control feature, which Apple launched to much acclaim recently — has left the company, according to sources.

There were several reasons for the departure, which was amicable and has been planned for a while, sources said. They included Kittlaus’s family being in Chicago, a desire to take time off and an interest in brainstorming new entrepreneurial ideas.

Kittlaus has led the speech recognition efforts for Apple since Apple bought Siri in April of 2010. He had been Siri’s CEO since 2007. Before that, the Norwegian-born Kittlaus was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Stanford Research Institute and had also worked at Motorola.

Kittlaus apparently left just after the launch of the iPhone 4S, in which Siri’s speech recognition technology was the highlight, but sources said other key execs from Siri are expected to remain at Apple.

I have queried Apple PR and am waiting for a response.

Here is a video of Kittlaus demoing Siri at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in 2009:

[ See post to watch video ]

Adnan Nevic, 12, hopes child seven billion will see world peace. Is it possible in a world of growing competition for resources?
In a modest flat in Visoko, near Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 12-year-old Adnan Nevic is playing with a globe. "America, Australia, Asia," he says, pointing out the places he would like to visit on the slightly deflated blow-up toy.
His favourite subject at school is geography and he wants to be a pilot when he grows up, the better to fulfil his dreams of global travel.
That Adnan has such an international outlook is hardly surprising: at only two days old, he was held aloft in a Sarajevo hospital by the then United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to be snapped by the world's news photographers.
Of all the 80 million babies born that year, Adnan was chosen as the world's six billionth living person.
The UN calculates that the world will have its seventh billion person on 31 October; the global population will hit nine billion by 2050; and, according to a UN report due on Wednesday, by the end of the century there could be 16 billion people on the planet, although most experts consider this an unlikely scenario, at the very top end of the range of expectations.
Adnan was born in 1999, chosen ostensibly at random but really as a symbol of hope after a bloody decade in the former Yugoslavia, which was also the birthplace of the five billionth baby, born in Zagreb in 1987.
The four billionth person was born in 1974, and the three billionth in 1960, according to the UN.
Before that, the world took much longer to add so many people: there were two billion people in 1927, and it took the whole of human history until 1804 to reach the point at which a whole billion people inhabited the planet at the same time.
Adnan, as well as being a 12-year-old boy with aspirations to travel the globe, is an emblem of the rapidly growing world population that until recently has shown few signs of abating.
Rising birth rates in many countries, particularly in the developing world, have combined with longer life expectancy and successes in reducing infant mortality to produce a total population that few used to predict was even possible.
Adnan lives in a modest flat in the historic city. The cars parked outside are mid-range models not more than a few years old, the blocks are well-kept and the surroundings are pleasant though not affluent. Outside the block there is a solitary piece of graffiti, in blue spraypaint. It reads "Adnan". He is a local celebrity.
Most of the 78 million children born this year – and of the two to three billion expected in the next 40 years – will not be so lucky. The vast majority will be born into appalling privation, in slums in developing countries.
Is the world failing these children?
Last year, although enough food was produced to satisfy the world's needs, at least one billion people went hungry, according to UN estimates.
The same number lacked access to clean water and more than 2.6 billion people still have no adequate sanitation. Most of the world's population now live in towns and cities, not the countryside, for the first time in history. But the urban centres that people are joining are the world's burgeoning megacities, in each of which tens of millions of people live in penury without electricity, water, toilets or enough to eat.
Child seven billion will be born into a different world to that which Adnan entered – one threatened by terrorism, economic crisis, climate change and new wars unthought of in 1999. But the problems that the exploding population will unleash may, according to some commentators, make today's crises seem mild.
"Of all the interconnected problems we face, perhaps the most serious is the proliferation of our own species," says Sir Crispin Tickell, a former British ambassador to the UN, now an environmental guru. "We are like a species out of control."
As population rises, this argument runs, consumption will increase and place an impossible strain on natural resources, from water supplies and agricultural land to fish in the ocean, as well as giving rise to runaway climate change as we burn ever more fossil fuels.
One example of the kind of problem the planet will face has been this year's devastating famine in the Horn of Africa. Drought was the primary cause, but it has been exacerbated by pressure on the land; the population of the region has doubled since the early 1970s.
Mary Robinson, the former Irish president, told a recent meeting of the Aspen Institute: "Somalia shows the extent to which failure to learn from the famine in 1992, and our failure to prioritise the health of women and children, has become a global problem, one none of us can ignore."
This view is derided in some quarters, especially the US right, as "neo-Malthusian" – a pessimistic assumption of limit to the world's bounty that has always been proved wrong in the past. Productivity – squeezing more food from less land, more energy from fewer resources – has kept pace with or exceeded population growth in the past, so why not in the future?
Although fertility rates have declined slightly from their 1960s peak, there is now a demographic "bulge", a boom in the number of young people, that will ensure growth continues at a clip for the next few decades. By around mid-century, if the predictions are right, population will for the first time in centuries begin a slow decline.
These are just guesses. Many experts believe the UN's nine billion to be a gross underestimate, and predict 11 billion or 12 billion as more likely.
Previous predictions have been too low: the UN's forecast in the early 1990s was that population would peak in 2050 at 7.8 billion, a level now virtually certain to be exceeded in the next 15 years.
This year, the seven billionth person will not be named; instead, the UN is merely celebrating the arrival on 31 October.
According to the UN, this is because all babies born around the time will be equally marked. But Adnan's family suspect the real reason may be embarrassment. His parents have been bewildered by the way the UN has behaved since singling out their only child for attention. Since that day, they have received almost no communication from the organisation and certainly no support.
"We saw Kofi Annan as almost like a godfather to him," says Adnan's father, Jasminko.
"He held me up when I was two days old, but since then we have heard nothing from them," says Adnan. The disappointment is palpable. Adan's father is unwell, and his pension and a small stipend paid by Sarajevo as long as Adnan remains in education are the family's only income.
For the boy singled out as the five billionth person, the story is remarkably similar. Matej Gaspar is also aggrieved at the way the UN picked him out at birth and then ignored him for the rest of his life. Adnan and Gaspar are friends on Facebook and have discussed what they regard as their unfair treatment.
It would not be surprising if the UN is touchy about its approach to population questions. For two decades, population concerns have been pushed to one side as governments have become increasingly sensitive about the issue.
There are several reasons – fear on the part of rich countries of being seen to attempt to control the fertility of developing nations; an emphasis on other problems, such as diseases, that seemed less intractable; and religion, which took population firmly off the international aid agenda for the whole of George W Bush's US presidency.
Even usually outspoken green groups have censored themselves on the subject, avoiding the question of whether the number of people on the planet has an impact on our ecology in favour of pointing out that the west consumes a far larger share of available resources than the south.
Some of this reticence is well-founded. Previous discussions under the heading of "overpopulation" implied that some of the world's inhabitants were surplus to requirements, an unpleasant suggestion that carried overtones of eugenics. Population experts lament that these fears prevented a frank discussion for years of whether we should be trying to curb the growth of population in our own interests.
Women's rights are central to this framing of the argument. Hundreds of millions of women around the world, but mainly in developing countries, have families bigger than they wish, because they are being denied the ability to control their own reproductive health, according to Population Action International.
Although the planet may be able to support billions more people than are forecast to join us, the question of how all of those new people can live decently, rather than in unnecessary misery, will not be answered by nature or technology but by politics.
Whether our political systems can cope with the strain – of competition for resources, of the distribution of Earth's natural wealth, of the potential for runaway climate change, and of the economic and social crises that will follow – without collapsing into destitution or war is a matter for conjecture.
Asked what he hopes for the seven billionth child, Adnan is unhesitating: "I wish that the birth of the seven billionth child brings peace to the planet."
From someone else, this might sound like a pious cliche. But from Adnan's fourth-floor bedroom window, you can look out to see another block of flats close by. More than 15 years after the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina officially ended, the walls still bear the scars of hundreds of bullets.
PopulationBosnia and HerzegovinaUnited NationsFiona Harveyguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Right on the heels of dumping stake in Bharatmatrimony, Yahoo is all set to bid its farewell to its Joint Ventures in India.

 Yahoo India has just announced that it is moving out of strategic investments in India - Tyroo and Callezee. The company’s board, as part of a Global Clean-up Plan, approved the complete divestment in India three weeks ago.

 The love story of Yahoo with India had begun in 2006 & matured in 2008. Subsequently, the 12% stake in Bharatmatrimony was offloaded in October 2011 to Bessemer Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund and Canaan Partners for INR 100 Crores. Yahoo is now about to finalize a deal for Tyroo and Callezee with Xplorer Capital, a fund floated by none other than former Yahoo employees including former senior VP Keith Nilsson!

 Gurgaon-based Tyroo, an online advertising network, had received Yahoo funding (Yahoo had acquired around 35% stake) in 2007 and has since grown to become the second biggest online advertisement network in India & comes in after Google with 100-150% growth over the last years! “Yahoo is exiting all its investments in India” a Tyroo executive revealed. This year itself it was also reported that Tyroo partnered with Slideshare to monetize their website in India. It was also reported that MediaMind and Tyroo tied- up with each other to launch their new ad format called VooDoo.

Callezee is a telephone directory search service. In 2008, Yahoo had acquired around 30% stake in Info Network Management Company Pvt Ltd (INMAC), the company that owns Callezee. Callezee was supposed to augment Yahoo’s search capability through its Voice Search offerings

With these warp-ups, Yahoo India appears to be on the brink of closure. However, Yahoo as a brand will always stay. Is Yahoo indeed right in its “Clean-Up” act or does it require some liquid funds for expansion / acquisitions elsewhere? Only time (or some Yahoo employee) can tell!

Author: Alap

Looking For A Social Media Agency?? - Contact WATConsult - India's Leading Social Media Agency

It's well-known that Steve Jobs put off surgery to treat his pancreatic cancer for nine months after it was diagnosed in 2003. Instead, he attempted to treat it with alternative therapies before electing to have a Whipple procedure in 2004. Now his biographer Walter Isaacson tells CBS show 60 Minutes that Apple's iconic CEO regretted not having the surgery earlier:

"I've asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, "I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way," Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, "I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking...we talked about this a lot," he tells Kroft. "He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it....I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."

Isaacson also reveals that Jobs continued to receive treatment for the cancer while maintaining he had been cured of the condition to Apple employees.

The 60 Minutes interview with Isaacson will air Sunday, October 23 at 7pm EDT. Isaacson's book, Steve Jobs will hit store shelves on Monday, October 24, and the Ars review of the book will be up shortly thereafter, so keep an eye out for it.





Read the comments on this post

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A project or person decides to ask for donations or in some other way to raise money via PayPal. A few days go by, things look great and then – suddenly – PayPal freezes the account. Sound familiar? It's happened once again with the Diaspora Project.

Sponsor

We wrote about Diaspora looking to raise funds a bit ago. Sadly, they chose PayPal. Yesterday the project reported that PayPal had frozen its account after raising about $45,000. The good news is that they've got a new system up and running but not before PayPal froze the current donation for 180 days.

As the Diaspora post points out, this is nothing new.

Read the account of a legitimate eBay seller, Shelly Michaels who had nearly £2,000 frozen for 180 days despite proof of legitimacy.
PayPal froze about $750,000 from when MineCraft creator Markus Persson was using it for MineCraft.
PayPal froze donations to Something Awful when it tried to raise funds after Hurricane Katrina.
PayPal froze payments to Xenonauts just a few weeks ago when it raised about $54,000 for game pre-orders.
The company also hosed Cryptome in 2010 when operator John Young used it for donations and raised about $5,000.
Last year PayPal froze donations to open source project TortoiseSVN after it raised funds via SourceForge's (PayPal-powered) donations button. That one's really fun, demonstrating that PayPal's employees don't even understand its Terms of Service.
A group raising money for WikiLeaks Bradley Manning had its account frozen, though PayPal surprisingly backed down quickly after public outcry. (I'm surprised at this one, given that PayPal actually had some defense that the organization hadn't exactly complied with PayPal policy.)
The X.org folks have also lost funds to PayPal to the tune of $5,000 or more.
In 2004, PayPal cut off the account for FreeNet.
Last year, the Burning Man Temple Crew had its funds frozen by PayPal.

I suppose somewhere there's a counter-example of a group using PayPal to raise significant funds without a glitch. But there are simply too many instances of PayPal arbitrarily freezing accounts for anyone to seriously consider it a viable option. Bottom line: If you need to fund something, find a way – any way – to raise funds other than using PayPal. It should be obvious by now, but I guess it bears repeating.

Discuss

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A project or person decides to ask for donations or in some other way to raise money via PayPal. A few days go by, things look great and then – suddenly – PayPal freezes the account. Sound familiar? It's happened once again with the Diaspora Project.

Sponsor

We wrote about Diaspora looking to raise funds a bit ago. Sadly, they chose PayPal. Yesterday the project reported that PayPal had frozen its account after raising about $45,000. The good news is that they've got a new system up and running but not before PayPal froze the current donation for 180 days.

As the Diaspora post points out, this is nothing new.

Read the account of a legitimate eBay seller, Shelly Michaels who had nearly £2,000 frozen for 180 days despite proof of legitimacy.
PayPal froze about $750,000 from when MineCraft creator Markus Persson was using it for MineCraft.
PayPal froze donations to Something Awful when it tried to raise funds after Hurricane Katrina.
PayPal froze payments to Xenonauts just a few weeks ago when it raised about $54,000 for game pre-orders.
The company also hosed Cryptome in 2010 when operator John Young used it for donations and raised about $5,000.
Last year PayPal froze donations to open source project TortoiseSVN after it raised funds via SourceForge's (PayPal-powered) donations button. That one's really fun, demonstrating that PayPal's employees don't even understand its Terms of Service.
A group raising money for WikiLeaks Bradley Manning had its account frozen, though PayPal surprisingly backed down quickly after public outcry. (I'm surprised at this one, given that PayPal actually had some defense that the organization hadn't exactly complied with PayPal policy.)
The X.org folks have also lost funds to PayPal to the tune of $5,000 or more.
In 2004, PayPal cut off the account for FreeNet.
Last year, the Burning Man Temple Crew had its funds frozen by PayPal.

I suppose somewhere there's a counter-example of a group using PayPal to raise significant funds without a glitch. But there are simply too many instances of PayPal arbitrarily freezing accounts for anyone to seriously consider it a viable option. Bottom line: If you need to fund something, find a way – any way – to raise funds other than using PayPal. It should be obvious by now, but I guess it bears repeating.

Discuss

Samsung on Wednesday launched ChatON, its answer to Apple’s iMessage and RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger.

Unlike those services, though, ChatON is designed to work across different phone operating systems. The service, announced back in August, is for now available as a download from Samsung’s app store and on the Android Market.

In addition to conventional text-based instant messages, ChatON also allows multimedia and animated messages using a combination of audio, scribbled text and a background image, Samsung said. It also supports group chat.

Samsung plans to preload the software on smartphones running its Bada operating system starting later this month, and will make it “gradually” available for other operating systems by the end of the year.

The Korean electronics giant showed off the service last month at the IFA trade show.

“Through its multi-platform and global availability, ChatON heralds a new age of mobile communication,” Samsung Senior VP Kang Min Lee said in a statement.

Google, the search company that started as two guys at Stanford, openly discriminates against entrepreneurs. At least for its Google News product.
Not only is that silly and short-sighted, but it should go against everything Google stands for.
Yesterday, I applied to have SplatF included in the Google News index. Beyond the hope to publish stories that might be considered “required reading” for the masses, I also figured that people searching Google News for, say, “iPhone 4S,” might appreciate my story angle to yesterday’s news, explaining Apple’s record-breaking sales weekend in context of its other iPhone launches. (Plenty of other sites liked it enough to link to it.) Even if I’m never featured in Google News, it seems logical to include SplatF — clearly a “news” site — in a news index.
But, it turns out, that Google has a rule about the sites that it includes in Google News: They can’t be one-person operations, and they have to appear to be “organizations.” Never mind solo shops practicing entrepreneurial journalism — Google wants news with overhead!
Here is the text of the email Google sent me to reject me:
Thank you for your interest in Google News. We’ve received your suggestion and we’re unable to include it in Google News at this time. We don’t include sites that are written and maintained by one individual. We currently only include articles from sources that could be considered organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information.
If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Forum at: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news?hl=en
We appreciate your taking the time to contact us and will log your site for consideration should our requirements change.
Regards, The Google News Team
This is especially disappointing because it feels un-Google-like. Here you have a company trying to use algorithms to organize and disseminate news and information, rejecting a news and information source because of the number of people listed on its about page.
I could easily (but dishonestly) stick a bunch of friends on the site as “contributors,” or something like that, to appease Google, but I would never do that. One of the things I decided right away is that I would never misrepresent SplatF’s size by using terms like “we” or disguising that it was a one-person attempt at self-publishing the news. But apparently, Google actually draws the line at how many writers you have.
So I figured I’d try to appeal my case to Google, explaining my situation and what I’m trying to do here.
In hindsight, I probably should have worded this differently, and included more information about my background — Medill journalism degree, employee no. 2 at Business Insider, reporter for Forbes, appearances on CNBC, lots of interest from mainstream media in syndicating my content verbatim, etc.
But in the interest of transparency, this is the email I sent in response:
Dear Google News team,
Thanks for your response, but I would like to appeal.
Your ad products, among others on the market, allow journalists to make a living by self-publishing — in essence, becoming their own news organizations. The readers that Google News could send to those publishers, in turn, could help those sites grow, potentially leading to them hiring more journalists in the future.
Why is that content not worthy of inclusion in the Google News index?
In my case, I am still under the exact same professional obligation to write original, accurate stories as I was at Forbes and Business Insider, my previous employers — it’s just a different economic arrangement. You had no problem indexing my stories and sending thousands of readers to them under those circumstances. Why now?
For what it’s worth, over the past 24 hours, editors at WSJ.com and a site affiliated with Time Inc. have both linked to my site. (Which, being Google, you already know. In fact, I assume you could easily call up all the “reputable” sites that have linked to mine since I started it three months ago.) So why is it that human editors at those sites can regularly link to my content, and send new readers my way, but Google News can’t?
It seems more Google-like to *support* those sorts of endeavors — and new journalism business models — by allowing sites like mine into Google News. Not to exclude them for frivolous reasons, like organizational structure.
Thanks for reconsidering.
Dan Frommer Founder and Editor, SplatF
That didn’t go over well, apparently. I was hoping for some reconsideration and reflection from a human, but instead, a few hours later, I received the same form letter in response. Sorry, pal, you don’t have enough coworkers to matter to our database. So, here I am, rejected from Google News, and now probably on some “flagged for being a troublemaker and questioning Google” list.
Putting myself in Google’s shoes, I can understand why they made this decision at some point. Most one-person sites probably aren’t reputable news sources. And this way, there are a lot fewer sites for Google News employees to sift through on a case-by-case basis — they can just reject all one-person operations automatically, and use their policy as justification. It’s easier and cleaner for Google.
But I still think it’s an outdated policy that needs changing. Or at least a reasonable appeals process, where a site like mine could be granted an exception. Why?
I can point out several factual errors and inconsistencies in stories written by bigger newsrooms that are indexed in Google News. (Not to mention huge ethical scandals, plagiarism, and fabricated stories — stuff you won’t find at SplatF.)I can find instances of big news “organizations” — Google’s preferred variety — adding little to no value, but getting the benefit of Google News inclusion anyway. Like this ABC News story yesterday (linked last night from the Yahoo homepage) rewriting a scandalous MacRumors forum post in the format of a news article, but adding little value and not doing any work to confirm that it is actually true. (“The whole thing may have been a joke,” it admits at the end. Yet it’s news! because it’s from ABC.)And I can point out plenty of information on one-person sites, such as John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, Michael Arrington’s Uncrunched, Horace Dediu’s Asymco, and even SplatF, that is easily worthy to Google tech news searchers.Moreover, this is a new age of media, where readers and writers are connected more closely than ever, thanks to tools like Twitter, Google Reader, and even Google+. I follow individual writers just as much as I follow the organizations that employ them, and I am hardly alone. Google News and other Google platforms should be encouraging and enabling this, not stifling it. You don’t have to look far to see that Google’s competitors — Amazon and Apple, in particular — are building platforms to support self-publishing, while Google apparently rejects it.
(Google also boasts on the About Google News page, “We do things a little differently, with the goal of offering our readers more personalized options and a wider variety of perspectives from which to choose.” But apparently, self-publishing journalists aren’t included in those perspectives.)
Google’s best future is one where legacy media is decentralized, and where an aggregator like Google News helps people make sense of it all. So why is it behaving the opposite, not supporting new entrants? (Unlike, say, Techmeme, which is a much better tech news aggregator and graciously supports entrepreneurial journalism.)
Why does Google discriminate between a post I write on SplatF and one I write for, say, Business Insider, where my editorial process is the same? (Perhaps Google has an outdated view of the publishing workflow at many online news organizations?) If anything, I’m even more careful since I started SplatF, because it is just me, and I have no one else to check my work and no corporate structure to hide behind.
Anyway, now, I assume, I am banned for life from Google News. But I recommend to Google management that they think a little more about the sort of news service they want to offer in 2011. Do they want to only lift the relevance of yesterday’s news brands? Or do they want to help support the future of media, where small operations can report and analyze news with the exact same accuracy and ethics as a large corporation?
The rest of Google’s business — publishing and search technology, advertising platforms, venture capital, etc. — seems aligned with entrepreneurism and small organizations challenging big incumbents. But for whatever reason, Google News is the exact opposite. And that’s too bad.
Related: Adventures in self-publishing: SplatF’s first quarterly report

My column in today’s DNA:

If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to have heard it fall, does it make a sound?’ is an old philosophical question on which there has been much heated argument over the centuries. The debate is a consequence of a school of philosophy that believes that events exist from the point of view of the observer. If there is no observer, then there is no event. Others, especially scientists, maintain that events exist irrespective of the presence of the observer.
In an era of 24-hour news channels, this philosophy can be revisited. If an event occurs, let’s say a protest, and there is no media coverage, then as far as public consciousness is concerned, does the issue even exist? Groups and causes that can articulate their view in media-friendly chunks have their issues become part of the public debate. Groups and causes that cannot, do not exist as far as the public space is concerned. Political and civil society groups of all hues and shades are beginning to realise this. They have realised that media coverage works best in the media centres — Mumbai and Delhi. And, protests work best when conducted in the full glare of the media. They realise that if there is no observer for an event, then the protest is as good as being dead in the water. For example, Irom Sharmilla has been fasting to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act for over 10 years, and it is just now that the protest has been noticed. And, that is because Anna Hazare’s 12-day fast brought Irom Sharmilla’s decade long fast into the limelight. Similarly,38-year-old Swami Nigamanand Saraswati died trying to save the Ganga from pollution caused by illegal mining. After 68 days of fasting in Haridwar he passed away. His death was covered by the ‘national media’ because it coincided with Baba Ramdev’s little drama at the Ramlila grounds. But his cause, that of saving the Ganga, is largely ignored.
Media coverage is not about how ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘important’ or ‘unimportant’ a cause is. It is about being part of the media’s line of sight and being able to keep catching their attention. Once the media starts paying attention, then the idea is to keep engaging the media on a constant basis, so that the cycle of publicity continues.
Today, packaging of news surrounding the protest is as important as the protest itself. Every successful protest is handled like a product. And, in a modern world, the product attributes are not as important as the packaging and promotional hype surrounding it.
That is the reason for the insistence on Jantar Mantar by Team Anna. Anna could have fasted anywhere else in India. After all, Gandhi fasted wherever he was — his ashram, jails, various cities — location didn’t deter him. But, in a modern India which is wired 24/7, it is important to be where the media is. If Anna Hazare had fasted in Ralegaon Siddhi would the event have been part of pan national consciousness or would it have been like Nigamanand Saraswati’s fast, mentioned in passing by regional news while being largely ignored by the ‘national’ media?
The recent attack by members of the ‘Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena’ on Prashant Bhushan — a core member of Team Anna — in full view of a television news crew is taking this philosophy one step further. The issue raised by the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena becomes part of national consciousness, overnight, because it was sensational, violent, jingoistic and on tape. We would not even have heard of this fringe organisation if they had hit someone without the TV crew being present. They were mimicking the acts of Sri Ram Sene a few years ago. The Ram Sene protesting against declining ‘moral’ values — decided to go to the nearest pub and beat up a few girls who were drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. But, before they went to teach the girls a lesson, they called the camera crews.

As a result, an intolerant, violent, extreme fringe organisation became part of pan-Indian consciousness.

News focus on strife, violence, drama and sensationalism to increase ratings, has led to it becoming the launching pad for many a fringe organisation. These groups thrive on media coverage. Their philosophy is immaterial — their rage is what sells. In its blinkered focus on only ratings, news channels have unleashed a genie that needs to be put back in the bottle.

Copyright © 2011 POV. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@calamur.org so we can take legal action immediately.Plugin by TaraganaRelated ReadingIf medium is message, what is the message?The Thirty Day Project – Day 16 – Media & RepresentationRadia Tapes – Silence of the Lambs ….Radia Tapes – Letter from an Editor ….Conversations with Power Brokers – view

It’s not a shocker, but the availability of the iPhone 4S gave Sprint its best sales day ever.

The company, which is investing heavily to at long last get the iPhone on its network, said it broke its record by 1 pm ET on Friday. Sprint is also now selling Apple’s iPhone 4 after years of going without an Apple phone in its lineup. (The iPhone’s existing carriers, AT&T and Verizon, also reported impressively strong sales; see updates below.)

“Sprint today reported its best ever day of sales in retail, web and telesales for a device family in Sprint history with the launch of iPhone 4S and iPhone 4,” Sprint product chief Fared Adib said in a statement. “The response to this device by current and new customers has surpassed our expectations and validates our customers’ desire for a truly unlimited data pricing plan.”

The iPhone went on sale on Friday at Apple’s retail stores as well as other locations including Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint stores. Apple said that it quickly sold 1 million phones during a pre-order period and all three U.S. carriers said they sold through their preorder allotments.

Update: A Verizon representative told AllThingsD that it is seeing strong traffic in its stores.

“Stores nationwide are reporting steady traffic as early-morning shoppers make purchases before heading to work,” said Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney. “We are seeing a nice mix of people who are first-time smartphone purchasers as well as those who are switching from competitors.”

Demand was particularly strong very early and during the lunch hour, Raney said. “Our customers were clearly excited to get their new iPhone 4s on the Verizon Wireless network,” Raney said. “We’re looking forward to a busy weekend.”

Update: And here’s the word from an AT&T spokesman: “As of 4:30 pm ET today, AT&T had already activated a record number of iPhones on our network -– and is on-track to double our previous record for activations on a single day.”

I have always admired Yahoo’s Chief Trust Officer Anne Toth, given she has done a great job articulating privacy issues at the Silicon Valley Internet giant. It is one of the areas where Yahoo truly shines.

But I really like the way she quit Yahoo after more than a dozen years there, with a very adorkable and classy status update on Facebook. It’s done with respect for the company and a lot of humor.

I don’t need to say more, except read it:

It’s official — I’ve broken up with my partner of 13 years. Yahoo!, I want you to know that it’s not you. It’s *me*. Really. After 13 years, I am just not the same person I was when we met. It’s not a midlife crisis. It’s just time to move on. Try new things. You’ll always be my first…Internet company. You changed my life and I will remember you forever. I know you’ll have a hard time adjusting at first, but once you find a new privacy person, you’ll forget about me in a heartbeat. Company’s are fickle that way. But we had something really special. A unique bond. I hope you’ll remember me for giving you the best years of my life.

The Zynga IPO is still on track. The social gaming giant has finally settled on a ticker symbol for the forthcoming $1 billion offering: ZNGA. In an amended S-1 filing with the SEC today, the company said its shares will trade under that symbol on the Nasdaq exchange.

Zillow already has dibs on Z; evidently ZNGA was the next best thing in Zynga’s eyes. I hope they at least considered BUBL.

Because the company plans to raise $1 billion for its upcoming IPO, that will give it an implied valuation of some $20 billion. To put that in perspective, it’s about the size of Activision’s and Electronic Arts’s valuations combined. That seems a heady number for a company whose business model is essentially fad-driven. But, as Zynga notes, it does control many of the most popular and successful online social games, and gaming has grown to become the second most popular online activity in the U.S. by time spent, surpassing even email.

Remember the Diaspora project? The federated and open source social network that launched its Kickstarter project just as public disgust at Facebook was at an all-time high? They're back, and looking for a little extra dough to complete the mission. It's been more than a year since the project launched with more than $200,000 in funding from more than 6,000 donors. Now's a good time to do a reality check, and see where the project stands. And maybe dig into your pockets.

Sponsor

Today the project posted a plea for $25, or whatever you can spare, to "keep building Diaspora."

How much are they trying to raise? At least enough to open their own office and provide resources to implement their "larger vision" of "a safer, more secure, and more private social Web."

Diaspora core member Maxwell Salzberg says "we are trying to obtain ongoing community support. We want to maintain Diaspora as a community-financed project, so the core product can remain non-commercial."

It's hard to explain. You only understand it when you meet our wonderful community and interact with other Diaspora* users. We're community-run, which means that we, as well as our developers and fellow users, are always available to answer questions, discuss feature requests, and provide assistance to other users. It's difficult to find another place online where so much democratic, grassroots interaction happens.

As for business models, Salzberg says that the team has not yet made any decisions. "The key right now is to build something that our community wants to use and that makes a difference in our users' lives. In the future, we will work with our community to determine with them how we could best turn Diaspora* into a self-sustaining operation.

Where The Money Went

You might wonder where the original $200,000 has gone since the project's initial Kickstarter project to build a free social platform. Fair enough, let's take a look how it's broken down so far.

First, Kickstarter takes a chunk of the cash receipts. That means that the $200,000 is actually a bit more than $178,000 after the Diaspora folks got the money. The developers have taken a modest salary of just over $28,000 each, and there's payroll taxes and insurance on top of that. So the biggest line item for the Diaspora team so far is payroll, which comes to just more than $114,000. To put that in perspective, assuming 40 hour weeks for 52 weeks, they're not quite bringing home $15 an hour.

There's also corporate taxes and filing fees, a housing allowance for the developers, and system expenses for hosting and development. For instance, they've spent nearly $6,500 just for hosting with Rackspace.

Finally, there's the fulfillment expenses for Kickstarter. They were on the hook for t-shirts, hardware, stickers, and other goodies to give to donors – and of course that money comes right out of the original donations. So that was just a bit more than $28,000 according to the profit and loss statement the Diaspora team sent me today.

All told, when everything is figured up, Diaspora is currently looking at a net loss of $238. The Kickstarter funds, according to the figures sent to me by Diaspora, are done.

Where They're At

You don't hear as much about Diaspora, but it's out there. The code for Diaspora is up on GitHub and you can find a bunch of Diaspora "Pods" that are up and running. Some pods have been up for a year with pretty good uptime. So from where I'm sitting, it looks like the developers have delivered on their promises so far. Diaspora is open source, distributed, federated and users own their data.

If you just want to use Diaspora, that's pretty easy, though access is limited on the main Pod. Salzberg says that they're getting ready to launch their beta version in November, and that the project is rolling out invites to the 500,000 users wait-listed there.

But no need to wait. I was able to sign up for a Pod (Diasp.org) and start using it in about a minute. The look and feel is a lot like Google Plus, as Jon Mitchell mentioned back in September. Never mind that Diaspora may have had some of the features first, the majority of users will have seen them on Google Plus first. I found that some, but not many, of my Facebook friends were already on Diaspora. Adding them is pretty easy as well. It has most of the features that you'd expect on a social network – shares, @replies, hashtags, and so on.

Disapora also integrates with Facebook and Twitter, though I don't see a Google Plus integration yet. You can cross-post to other platforms and look for your friends. If they've signed up for Diaspora, you can find them pretty easily.

The big feature, of course, is that you can export your data and even host your own pod if you want. Eventually, Diaspora even plans to offer the ability to move between pods.

Salzberg says that Diaspora "is unlike any other social network people have used in the past."

"It's hard to explain. You only understand it when you meet our wonderful community and interact with other Diaspora users. We're community-run, which means that we, as well as our developers and fellow users, are always available to answer questions, discuss feature requests, and provide assistance to other users. It's difficult to find another place online where so much democratic, grassroots interaction happens."

Community

Though the Diaspora project started with just a small core team, GitHub shows 150 contributors to the project, and the impact graphs show that there's a non-trivial amount of work coming from outside the core team. This indicates that the project is not only moving forward technically, but developing a reasonably diverse community of contributors – at least at first glance.

Salzberg says that Diaspora is now the 6th most popular project on GitHub, putting it in "the top 2% of open source projects."

What Now?

There's still a lot of work to be done before Diaspora disrupts Facebook or even Google Plus. How do I know? For one thing, I found out about the second round of fund-raising via Facebook.

It looks like it's becoming usable, but it's still not trivial to install – a major hurdle for a distributed system. It's also not at-par yet with Facebook or Google Plus, feature-wise. There's definitely a need for a sustainable business model for the Diaspora project. Going hat-in-hand to users is not a long-term model for funding, and the folks behind it might eventually want to make real salaries.

But it's making strong progress. The initial reaction that many people will have is "what, they're looking for money again so soon?" But $200,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to what Google and Facebook put into development, and they've managed to come a long way in one year. But to become truly competitive with Facebook, Google Plus and others, they have a lot longer to go. Think they'll make it?

Discuss

Last night, high-profile Google engineer Steve Yegge mistakenly posted a long rant about working at Amazon and Google’s own issues with creating platforms on Google+. Apparently, he only wanted to share it internally with everybody at Google, but mistaken shared it publicly. For the most part, Yegge’s post focusses on the horrors of working at Amazon, a company that is notorious for its political infighting. The most interesting part to me, though, is Yegge’s blunt assessment of what he perceives to be Google’s inability to understand platforms and how this could endanger the company in the long run.

The post itself has now been deleted, but given Google+’s reshare function, multiple copies exist on Google’s own social network and elsewhere on the web.

Google+ Is a Knee-Jerk Reaction
Here is the meat of his argument:

“Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product. But that’s not why they are successful. Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone. Some people spend all their time on Mafia Wars. Some spend all their time on Farmville. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of different high-quality time sinks available, so there’s something there for everyone.”

While Yegge doesn’t have a lot of good things to say about Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos, he does note that Bezos – unlike Google – understands that its not just about developing interesting products, but that it takes a platform to create a great product.

Besides Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft understand this, says Yegge: “It’s been part of their culture for a whole generation now. You don’t eat People Food and give your developers Dog Food. Doing that is simply robbing your long-term platform value for short-term successes. Platforms are all about long-term thinking.”

“The Google+ Platform is a Pathetic Afterthought”
He especially criticizes the Google+ team for launching a product without an API:

“The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call. One of the team members marched in and told me about it when they launched, and I asked: “So is it the Stalker API?” She got all glum and said “Yeah.” I mean, I was joking, but no… the only API call we offer is to get someone’s stream. So I guess the joke was on me.”

Looking at the long term, Yegge implores Google to move away from being a pure product company to becoming more of a platform player:

“The Golden Rule of Platforms, “Eat Your Own Dogfood”, can be rephrased as “Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything.” You can’t just bolt it on later. Certainly not easily at any rate — ask anyone who worked on platformizing MS Office. Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon. If you delay it, it’ll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front. You can’t cheat. You can’t have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason. You need to solve the hard problems up front.

I’m not saying it’s too late for us, but the longer we wait, the closer we get to being Too Late.”

Overall, of course, I’ve been quite positive about Google+ and see it as a step in the right direction for Google. For the most part, Yegge’s arguments do ring true, though. It was quite a surprise to me that Google+ didn’t launch with a fully-baked API right away, for example, but I can also see why the team wanted to get the basic product out and see how people would react to it.

I assume Yegge’s post will kick off some major internal discussion about this at Google. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out over the coming months.

Read the Full Post
Here is a copy of his full post (just click on the box to open it up):

Steve Yegge's Full Post
Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant

I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I’ve been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies — an impression that has been reinforced almost daily — is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it’s a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one. It’s pretty crazy. There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly. I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Legal wouldn’t let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting loved it.

I mean, just to give you a very brief taste: Amazon’s recruiting process is fundamentally flawed by having teams hire for themselves, so their hiring bar is incredibly inconsistent across teams, despite various efforts they’ve made to level it out. And their operations are a mess; they don’t really have SREs and they make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding – though again this varies by group, so it’s luck of the draw. They don’t give a single shit about charity or helping the needy or community contributions or anything like that. Never comes up there, except maybe to laugh about it. Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas. Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook. But they don’t have any of our perks or extras — they just try to match the offer-letter numbers, and that’s the end of it. Their code base is a disaster, with no engineering standards whatsoever except what individual teams choose to put in place.

To be fair, they do have a nice versioned-library system that we really ought to emulate, and a nice publish-subscribe system that we also have no equivalent for. But for the most part they just have a bunch of crappy tools that read and write state machine information into relational databases. We wouldn’t take most of it even if it were free.

I think the pubsub system and their library-shelf system were two out of the grand total of three things Amazon does better than google.

I guess you could make an argument that their bias for launching early and iterating like mad is also something they do well, but you can argue it either way. They prioritize launching early over everything else, including retention and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to matter in the long run. So even though it’s given them some competitive advantages in the marketplace, it’s created enough other problems to make it something less than a slam-dunk.

But there’s one thing they do really really well that pretty much makes up for ALL of their political, philosophical and technical screw-ups.

Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon’s retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple’s Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally — wisely — left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn’t let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they’re all still there, and Larry is not.

Micro-managing isn’t that third thing that Amazon does better than us, by the way. I mean, yeah, they micro-manage really well, but I wouldn’t list it as a strength or anything. I’m just trying to set the context here, to help you understand what happened. We’re talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon. He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people “who runs the company” when they disagree with him. The guy is a regular… well, Steve Jobs, I guess. Except without the fashion or design sense. Bezos is super smart; don’t get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.

So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He’s doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion — back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year — he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses.

His Big Mandate went something along these lines:

1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.

2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.

3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.

4) It doesn’t matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols — doesn’t matter. Bezos doesn’t care.

5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.

6) Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired.

7) Thank you; have a nice day!

Ha, ha! You 150-odd ex-Amazon folks here will of course realize immediately that #7 was a little joke I threw in, because Bezos most definitely does not give a shit about your day.

#6, however, w[…]

Google is targeting its App Engine platform-as-a-service cloud to business customers with a new $500-per-month plan that includes “premier support” and a 99.95 percent uptime service-level agreement. But customers may only contact Google after attempting to fix errors themselves, and “downtime” only counts against the SLA if there is more than a ten percent error rate and five consecutive minutes of degraded service.

“When choosing a platform for your most critical business applications or standardizing on one across your organization, we recognize that uptime guarantees, easy management and support are just as important as product features,” Group Product Manager Jessie Jiang announced in the Google Enterprise Blog. “So today, we are launching Google App Engine Premier Accounts. For $500 per month, you’ll receive premier support, a 99.95% uptime service level agreement and the ability to create unlimited number of apps on your premier account domain.”






Read the comments on this post

The real-time search engine Topsy, which has until now indexed Twitter, today adds public Google+ posts.

In what it says is an improvement on Google’s newly added Google+ search feature, Topsy says it ranks search results by trying to determine which users and posts are most globally and recently relevant for the query, rather than whether a user is close to or within the searcher’s Google+ network.

Google isn’t handing out much access to Google+ to developers yet, so Topsy is crawling the site’s public posts. That’s different from how Topsy indexes Twitter, which is through an agreement to use the official Firehose of all user tweets.

It’s unclear how many people are using Google+ these days, though user registrations seem to have ballooned up to at least the 50 million mark. According to Topsy’s observations, the number of public posts and comments on Google+ had grown to two million per day as of last week, up from 200,000 when it opened to the general public.

It should be possible to use Topsy search to get a better idea of how big Google+ is — or at least how big public behavior on the site is. For instance, Topsy execs told me Google+ was already getting 100,000 videos posted per week, compared to 200,000 posted on Twitter. After I mentioned how much it seems Google+ people like to bitch about Facebook, they found 82,000 mentions of Facebook on the site in the previous day.

Those numbers change every day, but now that Topsy’s Google+ search is open to the public, users can check for themselves.

Topsy has worked on, but never released, search for public Facebook posts, which it said Facebook makes difficult by throttling API access and other means. The search start-up might next release search for sites like Quora or blogs, the execs said.

BlueStacks, a start-up focused on allowing Android apps to run on Windows PCs, said it is ready to start public testing of its software.

The company is making an alpha, or early test version, of its software available to the public. Long-term, the company aims to make available both free and paid versions of its software, and to have it loaded on new PCs. The alpha version allows most Android titles to be loaded on a PC, but prohibits some games, such as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, that will ultimately be a part of the paid version.

“We’re happy with the degree to which apps work,” BlueStacks VP John Gargiulo said in an interview. “Not every app will work perfectly.”

The company’s app will ship with several Android apps preloaded, and users will also be able to push programs from their phone or tablet to the PC from a program that will be available from the Android market.

The appeal of the software may be challenging to understand for some who grew up with PCs. But CEO Rosen Sharma says it will be immediately obvious to the next generation, which has grown up with smartphone apps.

“Their first computing device is a phone,” Sharma said in a telephone interview. Indeed, BlueStacks had its idea for virtualization technology long before it had the idea to do Android on Windows. That specific implementation, Sharma said, came when one of his colleagues got back from a trip to Switzerland. On that trip, the colleague’s young daughter had played a lot of Android games. Back home, she wanted those same programs to run on the PC. With that, BlueStacks had its business model.

BlueStacks raised $7.6 million in Series A funding earlier this year from backers including Ignition Ventures, Radar Partners, Helion Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. The company has slightly more than two dozen workers at its headquarters in Campbell, Calif., and at offices in India, Taiwan and Japan.

For those still looking to pre-order the iPhone 4S, Sprint would like you to know that they aren’t totally sold out, although they have gone through their pre-sale allotment of the entry-level model.

“We do have the 32GB and 64GB versions, as well as the 8GB iPhone 4, available in both colors at this time,” Sprint representative Michelle Leff Mermelstein told AllThingsD.

The company said it won’t take backorders once it sells out on a model. “Sprint is committed to delivering devices to our pre-order customers on or very near the time of launch and also making these devices available for purchase on launch day – Friday, October 14,” Leff Mermelstein said. “Apple and other carriers may continue to take pre-orders that will be delivered to the customer at a later time.”

Apple has said it sold more than 1 million iPhone 4S pre-orders on the first day. AT&T, meanwhile, has said that it sold 200,000 devices in about 12 hours on launch day, while Sprint had previously said that sales had surpassed expectations.

Although all three carriers — Sprint, AT&T and Verizon Wireless — are selling the exact same iPhone 4S, there are differences both in the features of each network as well as the carriers’ billing plans. Sprint is focusing on the fact that it is the only carrier offering unlimited data plans to new iPhone customers.

Ubuntu Linux will be the primary operating system powering HP’s upcoming cloud service, Ubuntu maker Canonical said last week. HP recently opened a private beta program for an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud that will offer both compute and storage capacity, using the OpenStack open source cloud platform.

OpenStack, which was recently spun off from Rackspace, is designed to work with multiple operating systems and virtualization platforms. Options include VMware, Hyper-V, Windows and Xen. HP is going with an all-open source lineup, with the Linux-based KVM as its hypervisor, and Ubuntu for the operating system.

“HP has chosen Ubuntu as the lead host and guest operating system powering their Public Cloud,” Canonical said in a blog post. “HP and Canonical are working closely together during the current private beta to make certain that we provide the most secure, scalable, business-class cloud to companies of all sizes.”

While Ubuntu serves as the “reference OS” for OpenStack, HP isn’t required to use it. “This is an important announcement on several fronts—that OpenStack is seen as the platform of choice for building out the largest Public Clouds, and that Ubuntu has what it takes to power OpenStack clouds as a scalable and hardened host OS and responsive and flexible guest OS,” Canonical said.

Although Ubuntu is getting favorable treatment, HP could still allow customers to host multiple operating systems, just as its competitors do. Rackspace Cloud Servers and Amazon EC2, which both use Xen virtualization, allow hosting of various operating systems including Windows and various flavors of Linux.

The HP cloud is targeted at developers, ISVs and business customers, with the ability to deploy virtual machines and object storage capacity on demand. HP has reached its initial limit for customers during the private beta, but people can still sign up to get access when the beta is expanded.




Read the comments on this post

Sabu, the erstwhile leader of the hacking crew, says he is effectively on the run as he gives interview to Reddit readers about LulzSec's achievements, Facebook, sentencing and more
The hacker who styles himself "Sabu", erstwhile leader of the LulzSec hacking crew, claims to have a cache of emails copied from the Sun which are being stored on a Chinese server, along with data from a number of other hacks.
But he claimed this weekend that they will not be released yet: "there are a lot of interesting dumps we're sitting on due to timing," he wrote on his Twitter feed. He claims that hackers have broken into banks including HSBC and "a few others" but that they have found "no smoking guns yet" in the data there.
Sabu – who says his online handle is a tribute to the American professional wrestler – says that after the arrests in the UK and US of a number of people alleged to have been involved with the crew, he is effectively on the run. But his writing also suggests he is staying put where he lives.
"I'm past the point of no return. Not trying to sound like a bad ass, however, it's the truth," he wrote. Later he added: "The ironic twist will be that my own friends will take me down, and not these idiots who hide behind the patriot veil." He also says that "technically, I'm on the run, so there you go."
LulzSec was an offshoot of the Anonymous hacking collective which during a hacking spree in May and July 2011 broke into a number of sites, including Sony Pictures Europe, Fox.com, PBS and finally the News International site.
At the latter it altered the Sun's web page so that it redirected viewers first to a faked story about Rupert Murdoch's death, and then to their Twitter feed. The group also attacked the US Congress's web site, an FBI affiliate and brought down the web site for the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency by using a "distributed denial of service" attack.
Sabu effectively acted as the leader of the group, maintaining discipline over what they did, as leaked chatroom logs published in June by the Guardian show.
At that time he told members of the crew not to give interviews – but says his willingness to do so now is because "that was during the height of LulzSec. We all agreed to do no interviews till the end if there was ever one."
LulzSec's achievements, he says, were that it "exposed the sad state of security across the media, social, government online environments".
After the Sun hack, Sabu claimed on his Twitter feed that he was looking at 4GB of emails from the company. The claim was never confirmed, although remote access to News International's systems had been compromised.
Sabu's revelations came in a long and sometimes detailed "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) thread on Reddit. Sabu responds to a number of questions and appears to reveal a number of details about himself, such as that he is married, studied social sciences and English, that his technical hacking skills are self-taught, and that he teaches "sometimes". He claims to speak three languages – English, Spanish and German – fluently, and to have "decent" Portuguese and Italian. He says he turned towards computer hacking in 2000, when the US government "ignored the peoples' please to stop bombing Vieques" – a part of Puerto Rico used by the US navy as a bombing range until 2003. He says he likes working on cars, playing music and spending time with his family: "I'm loving life a lot this year. I barely have time for ops [hacker operations] like I used to."
That confirms other details that have been collected by rival hackers about Sabu which suggest that he is of Puerto Rican extraction, aged about 30 and based in New York.
He insists that he had no knowledge of the identities of any of the other members of LulzSec. "I simply don't know anyone's identity at Anonymous." He says that when one alleged member was arrested in the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland, he had to go and look up its location: "I was a bit impressed, even." He vehemently denies the suggestions by some that he "snitched" on other LulzSec members to the authorities.
The breakup of LulzSec meant he has "lost too many friends. [I] will probably never talk to them ever again." But he thinks that it "has already achieved what it set out to achieve".
He suggests that one of the LulzSec members, called Avunit, who quit the group when it took aim at the FBI, "is relaxing somewhere on a boat".
Asked whether he is "safe", he replies: "no one can prove it's me anyway. The beauty of Anonymous." The closest that the authorities have come to him is when in September they arrested a hacker alleged to have gone by the online handle "Recursion", who was tracked down via logs held by the British company HideMyAss, which unwittingly provided a virtual private network (VPN) connection for the attack on Sony Pictures Europe.
That arrest was "probably the closest they ever got", Sabu says. He also makes a veiled threat against HideMyAss: he alleges it "turns out to be owned by some … people who are going around buying smaller VPN providers ... We should have a nice exposé for HMA and its mother computer/investors soon. Point is: research your VPN provider thoroughly."
He says he takes a number of precautions to evade law enforcement, using prepaid phones and BlackBerrys for calls and Twitter: "they're expendable. I don't ignore you, I simply don't know you." He trusts Twitter – to some extent: "believe it or not, Twitter has not been sleeping in bed with LEAs [law enforcement agencies]. In fact it's a process [for LEAs] to get account info."
He rails at the sentencing guidelines in place for computer activity: "The penalties for any cybercrime (with the exception of child pornography) is severely archaic. And enforced by non-computer users. A DDOS (distributed denial of service) should not [attract a sentence of] 10 years at all especially when rapists and murderers do LESS than time." (The Guardian's James Ball made a similar point earlier this year.)
He thinks a hacking attack against Facebook "is pointless unless some very courages [sic] individual go and burn down its datacenter containing DBs [databases]". But he calls Facebook "a serious global cancer … they have half a billion people's psychology and family down in a database".
LulzSec does not have a Google Plus account, he says: "We do NOT have a g+ account. So whoever is running it is more than likely posing and has no affiliation to us." (Other Reddit users said that files distributed from that account contain malware.) Google Plus was launched well after LulzSec apparently broke up.
His advice to would-be emulators: "Stick to yourselves. If you are in a crew – keep your opsec up 24/7. Friends will try to take you down if they have to."
Anonymous, he says, is "no leaders, no hierarchy, no cointelpro [counter-intelligence program] drama. And we are a living, moving mass of like-minded individuals." He says it is "pure democracy", though that can be anarchic. But he thinks it will spawn "many organisations and political parties". But he says that "you don't need to be 'anonymous' or need to hack to be Anonymous. It's an idea, not a job."
He says he hopes to give a talk at the next HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in New York, expected to run in July 2012.
LulzSecAnonymousHackingThe SunDigital mediaNewspapers & magazinesCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

We’re entering what is likely to be a rather busy events season in India, with at least a conference a week expected from October through to January (apart from the Diwali and Christmas week). To make things simple for you, we’re launching a digital events website (or blog, if you prefer) called DigitalEvents.in, which lists digital (Internet, mobile and digitizing sectors) events by sub-sector (apps, e-commerce, egovernance, mobile, digital media, more to be added), as well as by city and month. It helps you plan your travel and helps us plan our coverage.

If you’re an event-goer

You may want to subscribe to our:

NewsLetter: Click here (Note: we will only send you event related emails. This list is opt-in only, and will require your confirmation once you apply for subscription)
RSS Feed: Click here
Twitter: in both MediaNama‘s feed (with over 35000 followers), or digitalevents.in on Twitter
Facebook: on MediaNama’s Facebook page

If there’s a relevant event that you think we’ve not listed, please let us know.

If you’re an event organizer

Please email your event listing to rakesh at medianama dot com, in the following format, for a free listing:

Date:
Time:
Venue:
City:
Registration Link:
Brief Description

You might also consider:

- Offer digitalevents.in readers a discount. All discount listings on DigitalEvents.in are paid. For details read this, and contact rakesh at medianama dot com to buy a discounts listing
- Advertise or partner with digitalevents.in. Contact sales@medianama.com for partnership
- Partner with DigitalEvents.in as a media partner

P.s.: If want to help improve the site in any way, email nikhil at medianama dot com.

The Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police’s Crime Branch has registered a criminal case against 22 individuals, who allegedly posted “highly offensive” content against senior Congress Leader, Digvijay Singh, reports PTI (via Outlook). The case was registered on 29th September under Section 66 of the IT Act which deals with punishment for sending offensive messages through communication services. It was registered after a 44 day probe by the Police, following a complaint filed by Digvijay Singh’s lawyer Rohit Kochar on 16th August, which had named eight websites including Facebook, Orkut, Ibibo, Twitter, MSN, Youtube, newsofdelhi.Com, dhimagkharab.Com and had sought registration of a case against then under Section 79 of IT Act.

Section 66 of the Indian IT Act lists offenses including sending by means of a computer resource or a communication device, information which is grossly offensive or has menacing character, information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance , inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will persistently, or any e-mail for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee  or recipient about the origin of such messages, and provides for a punishment amounting to imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine.

According to a report in Mail Today, which claims to have a copy of the FIR filed on behalf of Digvijay Sigh, the complaint states that Singh is aggrieved by the “unlawful activities” of various websites that have committed “serious criminal offence” by using computer resources to send and post “menacing, annoying, insulting and injurious” content, messages, pictures and other data.

It also mentions that the disparaging content is “grossly offensive, menacing in character” and designed to cause “annoyance, injury and insult to the Congress leader and his reputation”. It further adds that the issue has caused “acute mental pain and agony to Singh, his family members, friends and colleagues”, and that “the issue is also causing grave damage and injury to the reputation, goodwill and image of the Congress.”

Singh has asked the Police to take action to ensure that the websites expeditiously reveal the identity of the culprits, who have acted “unlawfully” by posting and spreading offensive material against him. He also added that social networking sites and other websites “cannot absolve themselves from the duty of being responsible and diligent service providers.”

We are trying to get a response from Rohit Kochar and will update the story shortly.
*Reach India’s Digital Industry Decision Makers: Advertise on MediaNama. Contact sales@medianama.com. For more info, click here.

Steve Jobs’s death has prompted Simon & Schuster to move up the publication date for his much-anticipated biography by Walter Issacson. The CBS-owned publishing unit has moved up the release date for “Steve Jobs” from Nov. 21 to Oct. 24. Not surprisingly, preorders for the book are skyrocketing, and the title now tops bestseller lists at both Amazon and Apple’s iTunes.

Yahoo's shares soared by 10% on the rumour that the software giant said to be considering a fresh bid for the internet business
Microsoft is considering a fresh attempt to take control of Yahoo, sources close to the situation have told Reuters, more than three years after its first bid for the internet business failed,
The software giant launched a $44.6bn hostile bid for Yahoo in 2008 that was vigorously rebuffed by the company. Yahoo's share price has subsequently collapsed and the firm was valued at less than $18bn before Microsoft's renewed interest was reported.
Yahoo's shares soared by 10% on the rumour, which neither company would comment on, before falling back in after-hours trading. Peaking at $15.94, the shares were still barely half the value of Microsoft's $31-per-share offer in 2008.
Yahoo axed chief executive Carol Bartz last month and said the company was conducting a strategic review of its business, prompting speculation that it was a takeover target.
Goldman Sachs and media specialist Allen & Co are working with the firm and are believed to be sounding out potential buyers. Last month, several Yahoo employees in were told in a memo that the company's financial advisers were "fielding inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options."
Jack Ma, chief executive of Chinese internet company Alibaba, has already expressed an interest in buying Yahoo. The US firm owns 40% of Alibaba and Ma has previously sought to buy back the holding. The two firms have had a contentious relationship and Bartz was criticised for her handling of the Chinese firm, seen as one of Yahoo's best assets.
Other potential bidders include News Corp, buyout firms Providence Equity Partners, Hellman & Friedman and Silver Lake Partners and Russian technology investment firm Digital Sky Technology. Microsoft may seek a partner to go after Yahoo, according to Reuters' sources.
If Microsoft makes a bid it will be at a fraction of the price it was prepared to pay in 2008. That bid ended in failure after an intense four-month battle that eventually led to the resignation of Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, who has opposed Microsoft's move.
According to Reuters there are "two camps" within Microsoft. One group of executives believe buying Yahoo would be a 'knock-out blow' to rival AOL, leaving MS-Yahoo as the undisputed leading web portal. Others, though, believe Microsoft should focus on buying companies with more potential for growth.
Yahoo is still one of the biggest draws on the internet but it has lost out to Google and Facebook in the battle to win over advertisers.
At the time of the original bid Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer said buying Yahoo was the best way to achieve scale online, an area where the software giant has trailed arch-rival Google.
The two firms started talking again in 2009 and Microsoft signed a 10-year deal with Yahoo to run its internet search advertising business. That deal was attacked by Google as an "attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC."
Any new deal between the two firms is also likely to spark regulatory scrutiny and fierce lobbying from Google.
Tech analysts were sceptical about the chances of Microsoft bidding for Yahoo again, especially now it has secured the search advertising deal. They also argued that the sale process remains in its early stages.
Yahoo takeoverMergers, acquisitions and fundingMicrosoftComputingYahooInternetTechnology sectorMedia businessDigital mediaDominic Rusheguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Relentless focus and the purpose of an operating system boiled down to four words: Matt Drance, Pete Warden, Chuq von Rospach and others recall the experience
Flat structureApple's really efficient and very impersonal when it comes to making decisions [about killing a product]. There is never any illusion about what the company's focus is and that comes from the top, that came from people like Steve and Scott [Forstall, head of iPhone software], formerly [software chief] Bertrand [Serlet], Tim Cook, everybody, they know what Apple is supposed to be doing and the other side of that is they know what Apple is doing, they actually know what's going on in their back yards.
Apple is a very flat organisation, there's not that many layers, and they're just all really involved. There were either five or six layers between me and Steve – my boss was [marketing chief] Phil Schiller. I mean, these executives, they're sending emails very late at night, sometimes after midnight. Apple is the biggest startup in the world, people work day in and day out because they believe in what they're doing. I was at the bottom of the [organisational] chart, I didn't have people under me, but I still – every time I worked on my slides or I worked on a demo or whatever – I would ask myself, I'd say if I had to show this to Steve, what would he say? And, as long as people keep asking themselves that question, and I believe that they will, then Apple's going to be fine.- Matt Drance worked as developer evangelist at Apple from May 2001 to July 2009 and now runs Bookhouse Software
Steve was everywhereIn my years as an engineer at Apple I only saw Steve in the hallways, we never talked and I never presented to him. Even so, he completely dominated my work. I was building a fairly niche product for professional video editors, but despite our relative lack of significance the team still had to give him quarterly demos. Looking back, it's hard to imagine how many of those sort of meetings he must have done across the company. He was hands-on in a way I've never seen anywhere else, and it must have been exhausting and time-consuming for him.
These were nail-biting occasions for us. We'd wait in our office to hear the verdict while the designer presented behind closed doors. Several times he never even got as far as showing off the features we'd been slaving over because Steve would immediately focus on a bad visual element in the interface. Whether it was an ugly button, a mis-aligned font, or a control panel with too many buttons, we'd never recover. All our work under the hood meant nothing, he had seen enough and we'd failed.
At first I found this intensely frustrating. It felt like nit-picking over unimportant details. Couldn't he see past the cosmetic issues to the impressive code we'd been writing? We were solving hard problems, so what if there were a few rough edges? It took me time to realise how effective his method was. Because we knew any surface sloppiness would negate everything else we did, the user experience became the true top priority. We began to think about how Steve would see any changes we were considering, he would constantly come up in discussions.
Our lives would have been so much easier if we could have just cut some corners, in ways that would have been seen as perfectly reasonable at any other company. Knowing he had an absolute veto and would use it if he saw the experience being threatened forced us to do better. By being both unreasonable and right, he taught us to create products to delight people, not just satisfy them.- Pete Warden worked at Apple from July 2003 to July 2008. He now runs OpenHeatMap and is CTO at Jetpac
What if Steve had never existed?Try to imagine today's society if Steve didn't exist. Can you? The Apple II. the Macintosh. The mouse. Making computers accessible to non-technical people in general. Reinventing the music industry with iPod and iTunes, over the express wishes of the industry. Beginning a similar reinvention of film and video. Revitalising animation with Pixar. Reinventing the personal communication industry with the iPhone. And most recently the iPad. He was a fundamental part of so many societal changes, any one of which would make most people's careers.
I am who I am today because of Steve, through the companies and the products and the technologies he fostered; more importantly, because of the people he brought in and mentored who turned into people that mentored me. Because of the thinking and attitudes he promoted and inoculated that became key parts of what I've become. I'm the person I am because of Steve and what he did, the opportunities he created, and the attitudes and expectations he baked into those around him.
I almost ran over Steve once outside of Infinite Loop 1 as I was coming in for a meeting and he popped into the street without really looking, [iPod division chief] Jon Rubinstein and [iTunes chief] Eddy Cue in tow. He almost returned the favour once as he drove in to work as I was in the same crosswalk.
Steve could be a tough and very intimidating person, but as much as he demanded of others, he demanded more of himself. He was involved in one of my projects at Apple, and I used to watch the team scramble as Steve reviewed ad copy hours before a launch and mark up changes. He was that involved in the details, and he was always right.
Now Steve has left us, but his memory and his legacy live on, and they will continue to drive and shape the world we live in for years to come. Nobody can replace Steve Jobs – he was unique. Each of us can choose to do something to fill a small part of the void he's left. If we do, we will help fulfil the legacy he started in trying to make the world better for all of us. I am a better person for having lived under his influence, and I can never pay that back, but I can try to carry that forward in his memory. - Chuq von Rospach worked at Apple for 17 years, from 1989 to September 2009; he now works at Hewlett-Packard
Relentless requirement to meet the highest of standards – and everyday magic"It's all true." Those words compelled me to accept a job offer at Apple. And, it was all true. Steve's Apple had the most talented people in the world, the subtle chaos necessary to develop new ideas, and the relentless requirement to always meet his highest of standards. Steve Jobs has been described as "brilliant" and "mean" in the same breath. Brilliant because of his insight and vision, mean because he would let you know if your ideas weren't insightful or visionary.
Feature reviews were always stressful. Would Steve like the idea? Would a stray pixel distract the course of the meeting? Would it be axed on the spot? If it were, you might go back to sulk at your desk, but you'd always realise that his reasoning was right. This stress is how Apple ticked; the quest to make the world a better place doesn't happen by coddling egos or releasing mediocre products. The culture of excellence and attention to detail was rooted at the top.
In my time at Apple, I saw Steve's true gift was he could bring complete focus to a product, seemingly off-the-cuff. Lion started as many engineering-brainstormed ideas glommed together to form an incoherent product. The pieces were great, the sum was unknown. After months of development, it underwent first review by Steve. Like a dog being yanked back on its leash, Steve stated that Lion (Mac OSX 10.7, released earlier this year) needed to bring the iPad "back to the Mac". In a split second it all became clear. Hundreds of engineers now had a common goal to work for, all due to Steve's ability to distil down what would be millions of lines of code into four words. This is not an isolated story but a common occurrence. This was the everyday magic of Steve Jobs, which the world lost today.
Former staff member (anonymous at their request)
Steve JobsAppleCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

That picture pretty much says it all. During the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event on Tuesday, I kept noticing that seat. “Reserved.” It was weird that the camera kept panning to that shot of the front row in Town Hall.
The room was packed tight with journalists, but there was that one seat left empty in the front row next to all of the other Apple executives. Steve’s seat.
I don’t know for sure if that seat was left empty for Steve or not, but I can only imagine that it had to have been. In a way, that reserved seat summarizes the core of who Apple is as a company and group of people.
Apple’s tribute page to Steve Jobs says that, “his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.” During Tuesday’s keynote, I kept wondering why the team of presenters seemed so subdued — especially Tim Cook and Phil Schiller.
I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but looking back, it’s obvious that Cook and the rest of the executive team knew that their dear friend and leader was on the verge of death. But there were still products to be announced, and as they say, “the show must go on.”
So, Cook, Forstall, Cue, and Schiller all gave us an Apple event filled with news on the state of Apple, iCloud, iOS 5, the iPod, and the iPhone 4S. Whether you like the 4S or not, you can’t deny that Apple delivered on Tuesday. Apple delivered without Steve.
But that reserved seat still says something. It says that there will always be a place for Steve at Apple. It says that, although Steve may be gone for good now, his impact and influence will always be appreciated and cherished by the company he invested relentlessly in for so many years. His spirit lives on through his products and the people he raised up to lead Apple into the future.
There will always be a seat reserved for you, Steve.
Similar Posts:Watch Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” Event OnlineHow Did Tim Cook Do Today? [Opinion]Steve Jobs Slowly Beginning to Let Go of the Reins at AppleScott Forstall Talks iOS Numbers: Quarter Billion Devices Sold and iPad is Number One [Let's Talk iPhone]Munster: Jobs’ Absence Makes Macworld A Snore

Steve Jobs’s influence touched people around the world. We’ve heard from many of them tonight, but that’s just a small sampling. Please feel free to use this forum to let us know what the Apple co-founder meant to you.

We’ll start out by including thoughts some of you have left on other posts on this site tonight, and then we’re going to open up the comments section. Please do remember our comments guidelines. (Refresher course: “Civility is the rule.”)

humanity does not get measured by sales of ipads, ipods, iphones. the world has lost a man. a great man
– Tablet Cases

Tonight I shut down the entire companies computers and we take a moment of silence to rembember a truely remarkable american. We will miss you Steve, you are an inspiration to us all
– Rogueknight

The very fact I saw this sad news on my iPad 2 first says a lot on how much Jobs has changed the world. He will truly be remembered not only as a one of the greatest business leaders in American history, but also one who had a huge impact on the motion picture industry through Pixar with its multiple Oscar wins.
Alas, gone too soon. :-(
– RaymondC

A tremor has been felt in the Universe.
– Fast Fred

I can proudly tell future generations that I lived during “Steve Jobs years” and how he impacted our lives and has permanently changed the future. He was the greatest mind in the last 50 years.
– Super Tino

Most of my life has been entwined with Apple — since the start of high school in 1980 and as the core of my working life over the years through selling and servicing. He was only 11 years older than me and I still feel so young. A real shame. His legacy lives on in so much we take for granted everyday.
– Todd Dixon

iSad
– Sybill

I almost feel like I’ve lost a brother.
– jethrObama

Steve Jobs’ passing reminds us reminds to make the most of our lives while we’re here.A brilliant innovator, but also a kind soul who — together with his family — greeted neighborhood kids with warmth and graciousness every Halloween.
– Joel Zand

heartbreaking. as i roll my iPhone in my hand, i feel a personal loss. … Till last breath you innovated. Hats off to you!
– Shirish Kumar

I feel like I lost a family member. My heart hurts. Rest in peace Steve. Many of us love you, forever and ever.
– Appletini

The world loses one of its greatest champions of excellence. Good-bye, Steve.
– MichaelK

What an amazing Human Being he was… By reading his words you can tell in a minute the clarity and simplicity of his soul… like he said: “…Simple is harder…”
– peoc

Only Steve Jobs made us feel like he knew what we really needed to get it done and gave us that. Without the fluff and chrome.
– Perk

I never knew Steve Jobs. As a tech devotee, however, I always admired the beauty of the products he sold, regardless of my OS leanings.
That being said, I can’t help but feel grieved at Steve Jobs’ passing. I don’t grieve for his passing from this life and relief from his suffering, but I grieve for our loss. I hope that people like him will pick up scrappy little companies like Pixar and help them shine, and will put out products that are concerned with the user experience, rather than the specifications.
As I mentioned, I never knew the man, but I marvel at the simplicity of the iPod’s interface (especially in later click wheel iterations, like my 4th-gen iPod nano). I marvel at how easily my daughter uses our iPad to create and to play. I marvel at the clean design of my wife’s Macbook Air.
While my phone is Android and my desktop is a personally-built Windows machine, I have become an Apple fan, somewhere along the road. And I know Steve Jobs is a big reason for that.
Thanks again, and rest in peace, from one Steve to another.
– Steve Sleight

In a very real way, Steve Jobs brought my family — dispersed around the country, like so many families — back together. From the oldest to the youngest, we’re in touch again and closer than ever because of the dreams he made sure came true. We’re all thinking of him — and thanking him — tonight.
– joebsf

Too soon to be finished; so much more to be done. Too much genius to be wasted. Too sad for the world to have lost so much. Condolences to us all.
– Jennifer Pierce

RELATED POSTS:

Samsung, Google Cancel Launch Event Out of Respect for Steve Jobs
Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert Say Goodbye to Steve Jobs
An Accountant’s Soul Presides Over the P&L at Apple
New York Times Crossword Honors Steve Jobs With Puzzle Written by Quora Engineer
For Steve (Comic)
Walt Mossberg Reflects on Life and Career of Steve Jobs for Fox Business (Video)
Apple Shares Rise
Steve Jobs Biography Arrives in October, a Month Early
Now What? The Post-Jobs Era in Tech.
Thoughts on the First Day of Apple’s Post-Jobs Era
How Will Apple Shares Fare Today?
Tributes to Steve Jobs, in Pictures
The Three Irreplaceable Qualities of Steve Jobs
Walt Mossberg: The Steve Jobs I Knew
Remembering the Life of Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs in His Own Words
Barack Obama On Steve Jobs
Tech and Media Titans Pay Tribute to Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs’s Appearances at D, the Full Video Sessions
Bill Gates: “I Will Miss Steve Immensely”
Steve Jobs Through the Years: Highlights and Clips From the D Conference
Steve Jobs Has Died

Steve Jobs Full Coverage »

It looks like just on the edge of unveiling the new iPhone, hackers across the Internet have already gotten on the ball and prepared a jailbreak for the device that allows tethering.

The jailbreak program is named Redsn0w (updated version 0.9.9b2) but it does require that the smartphone be tethered to a computer running the program on boot in order to access the jailbroken interface. The jailbreak affects the Gold Master build of iOS 5 which means it affects iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices running that version of the software.

The jailbreak has been confirmed by notorious iPhone hacker @MuscleNerd’s Twitter feed. “redsn0w http://is.gd/6eek4Y can already tether JB 5.0GM (select beta7 IPSW for now though, til update) http://is.gd/SXCEi4.”

It is available at several URLs being released at several different URLs (although the one in @MuscleNerd’s Twitter post is currently down due to excessive volume.)

Tutorials on how to jailbreak your iPhone 4S are already cropping up across the Internet. Good luck.



Jailbreak Utility for iPhone Redsn0w Ahead of the Game with iOS 5.0 GM for iPhone 4S, iPad, and iPod is a post from: SiliconANGLE

We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.




In the same vein:Cook Inherits Apple, What Happens to the Ensemble Now?Mobile Roundup: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Kick Starts More Tablet Wars From Autism to Mosquito Repellent, Mobile Apps Find Unique UsesU.S., Far East and China Will Lead Mobile Entertainment to $54B Revenue in 2015An Apple For Everybody: Mobile World Congress 2011KPCB Mobile Course: The Movers, Shakers and the Will-Be-Forgotten

On Monday, it was noted the Microsoft removed reference for Zune HD on their site which people took that Zune is already dead but Microsoft Zune Team member Michael Yaeger stated that it was just a mistake and the reference is now back up.  But the Zune player and support service page tells the real story.

“We recently announced that, going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy, and that we will no longer be producing Zune players. So what does this mean for our current Zune users? Absolutely nothing. Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices. Customer service has been, and will remain a top priority for us.”

The death of the Zune wasn’t a surprise, since the device wasn’t really a popular choice for music lovers. The Zune’s developments were always outdated and lacked several features compared to Apple products.  Last March, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft will stop releasing new models of Zune, which Senior Business Development Manager for Zune Dave McLauchlan quickly refuted the news, and stated that what Bloomberg reported was not an official statement from Microsoft and people shouldn’t believe everything they read.

Though the Zune.net page still features the Zune HD, it can be noted that the focus is more on the software, Music Pass, Zune on Windows Phone and Xbox LIVE.  This is where Microsoft will truly be able to compete, even though Apple has a pretty good handle on the personal cloud as far as music media goes.  As cloud technology reaches more consumers, however, the service will matter less and access will become the priority here.  That means a great deal more cooperation will have to take place across devices and services, so Microsoft’s software goals make sense for the Zune.

At present, portable music players aren’t that big of a deal anymore.  Most smartphones offer music listening features just like any MP3 or MP4 player out in the market.  Even the glorified iPods are taking a backseat to the iPhone and iPad.  Music has become an integrated feature rather than a selling point, and that’s generally a good thing.



R.I.P. Zune HD: Apple Will Take Things From Here is a post from: SiliconANGLE

We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.




In the same vein:Despite Recent Anti-Zune Sentiment, The Zune HD Still Has an Opportunity to DominateMango Update News Lost on iPhone 4S Launch DaySamsung Furthers Diversification Beyond AndroidMicrosoft, Nokia Guide Symbian Developers to Windows Phone PlatformMicrosoft Mango Gets Voice-To-Text, Releases .NET GadgeteerMicrosoft Gives Augmented Reality a Booster Shot with Windows Phone OS and Kinect Updates

Three years after being bought by Best Buy, online music subcription service Napster has been acquired by rival company Rhapsody. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

The acquisition will give Rhapsody Napster's paying subscribers as well as "certain other assets" including Napster's IP portfolio. The companies' announcement did not divulge the current number of Napster subscribers, but it's understood to be at least half of Rhapsody's 700,000 subscribers.

Sponsor

Napster is best known as the controversial peer-to-peer filesharing service that shook up the music industry a decade ago by making a massive, distributed library of music and other files available to download for free. After a few years of legal battles with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Napster shut down its original P2P filesharing service in July 2001.

Napster filed for bankruptcy and was ordered to liquidate its assets in 2002. The company's assets and brand changed hands a few times before being purchased by Roxio, which relaunched Napster as a pay subscription music service.

After its relaunch as a pay service, Napster never quite regained the popularity it once had in its P2P days, during which it grew significantly thanks to the ongoing media coverage and controversy Napster garnered at the time.

This latest deal effectively rolls Napster's remaining subscribers and IP portfolio into Rhapsody, which the company hopes will better position it to compete against the likes of Rdio, MOG and Spotify, the European on-demand streaming service that launched in the United States in July.

This new breed of on-demand, all-you-can-stream subscription music service has been growing in popularity in the years since the demise of the original Napster. Several of them, including Spotify and Rhapsody, recently unveiled tight integrations with Facebook for a more social music-listening and sharing experience. There's even evidence suggesting that the rise of pay subscription services has helped decrease illegal piracy of the sort Napster originally enabled.

Discuss

A handful of code in iTunes 10.5 beta 9 suggests that Apple may soon start allowing customers to rent apps from the App store, according to The Tech Erra. If a rental system were put into place, it could cut down on money spent on apps that customers never use, which could reduce resentment customers feel toward developers when an app doesn’t work the way they thought it would.

A few strings in the iTunes beta code appear to be pop-up messages to notify customers about the state of rented apps: "Apps are automatically removed from your iTunes library at the end of the rental period" and "This app will be deleted from your computer" are a couple of the included statements.

A rental system through the App Store would be similar to the try-before-you-buy program that Amazon currently offers in its own Android Appstore. None of the language uncovered in the iTunes beta indicates whether rentals would carry a price or be free for their limited run.

The text does suggest that Apple will favor the consumer in rental transactions, in that customers won’t default into an app purchase at the end of a rental period; instead, the app will be removed from their devices. When so many negative reviews focus on an app not doing what a buyer expected it to (through either misdirection or misunderstanding), rentals could create a more positive app shopping experience.

But even with fewer negative reviews, developers could still lose out. Most iPhone users never use an app after the first download, according to a (now aging) study, so customers could dip in and out of apps they only need once without any monetary consequences.

The report is unconfirmed by Apple, as the company did not respond to Ars' requests for comment. If Apple plans to launch a rental program, we’ll likely hear about it at the iPhone event scheduled this week. Ars will be reporting live from the event Tuesday at 10AM PDT.




Read the comments on this post

Larry Ellison (in his worst keynote ever?) announced Exalytics today, an appliance for in-memory analytics.

As I reported on Friday, the hardware/software integration is the next permutation of Exalogic, what Ellison last year called a cloud in a box. Ellison said Exalytics is based upon Times Ten, which Oracle acquired in 2005.

This keynote seemed made for the old guard – it was all about the hardware – appliances.  As Ray Wang tweeted, it had nothing for the next generation CIO. It seemed more like a product demo than a vision of the future.

The keynote had fits and starts, ending with Larry running off the stage. He read the slides. He had no encompassing vision. At its best, we heard Larry talk about how Oracle plans to “parallel everything.”

As ZDnet points out, the new Oracle hardware is a parallel configuration of servers, networks and storage. The software is the virtual machine, operating system, database and middleware. It’s this parallel everything approach, combined with hardware/software integration, that competitors lack.

What is it, though – this Exalytics?

Ellison said the new Exalytics analyses relational, multidimensional and unstructured data in any combination. It’s an in-memory analytics machine, that looks like a competitor to SAP HANA.

To Oracle’s credit, the Exalytics system is pre-engineered for what Ellison says is easy deployment. That should give the SAP team some pause. Ellison made the point that Exalytics requires no fine tuning. It just runs. That’s an Oracle theme and a proven winning approach.

Ellison said Exalytics has one terabyte of DRAM with 40 cores compute in parallel. A scan compresses five terabyte databases in five seconds with fast connections to Exadata. It has 40 gigabytes per second (Gbps) InfiniBand and 1-10 Gbps ethernet.

The software uses in-memory parallel analytics, in-memory parallel version of the Essbase OLAP server and in-memory parallel Times Ten.

Here’s the problem, though, as Michael Krigsman and Paul Greenberg sees it. And I have to agree.

Ellison showed off Exalytics but did not show off any customers. There is no connection between the technology and the vision for what this means for Oracle. On the other hand, Curt Monash makes the point that SAP was also wildly optimistic when it launched HANA. Fluff is definitely a shared attribute.

Services Angle
Ellison focused on parallel computing as the main theme for his keynote. He talked a lot about making things faster.

He called out IBM as a competitor he looks to beat. But did we hear about a grand vision for the next generation of leaders whose careers are tied directly to the big data themes we read about every day? I didn’t hear anything in that respect. There was not one mention of services. And that’s the future isn’t it? A future that dictates IT becomes a service. Very few companies can afford these kinds of machines. Most are looking to services as their future.

Larry did not show the mojo that we have come to expect from him. No passion. Just a lot of talk that sounded a lot like what we heard last year.

I will give this to Larry. Hi son got married last night. Congrats. He said he had not really slept since Friday. Okay – he deserves some slack. But, still, Larry read slides to his audience.  I can’t ever seeing Marc Benioff do that.

So, you have to wonder, is Oracle ready for the race or is it showing that it might really have a match in this new generation of service providers? And is that a race that Larry really wants to run?



In Possibly His Worst Keynote Ever, Larry Ellison Unveils “Exalytics” is a post from: SiliconANGLE

We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.




In the same vein:Ellison’s Exadata Keynote Sets Tone of Hilarity for Oracle Openworld 2011HP’s Poison Pill and a Broken Cone of SilenceSchmidt Admits “Google might be a monopoly…”Google’s Schmidt Fighting Fires, from Oracle to FTCThe Larrys Failed to Settle In Court: Oracle vs. Google Lives OnThe Larry’s Head to Court as Google Faces Fire from All Sides

When Klout announced in mid-September that Blogger and Tumblr would play a role in determining your Klout score, WordPress users immediately asked, “What about us?”

Klout responded by quietly adding WordPress.com to its scoring system, which already factors in 11 other services: Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Google+, Instagram, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube. Unlike its integration with those services, Klout didn’t publicly reveal the WordPress.com addition, but we noticed the WordPress button on the Klout dashboard anyway.

Update: Only blogs hosted on WordPress.com were added to Klout, an Automattic rep told Mashable. Self-hosted blogs on WordPress.org aren’t included in Klout scores yet.

“People love WordPress and have put a ton of effort creating their blogs and building and influencing their audience,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez told Mashable. “Our goal is to measure influence everywhere it occurs. [Posterous, Quora, Yelp] and and many others are on our roadmap.”

Recently, the San Francisco-based startup also released a feature that lets users gain insights on top content influencers, as well as users who have received the most +Ks for respective topics.

“The big thing historically we have not done a good job on is helping people understand their scores,” Fernandez said. “Through the rest of the year, you will see us release a series of features that really address this.”

“I often think back to doing a Google search in 2000, the results were better than anything else out there, but they have had to constantly improve to be where they are today. That’s how I think of Klout. We are taking on a huge challenge and it’s very early in the game and we have a long journey ahead of us. The key difference is when you search Google and the result you wanted comes up third instead of first you generally don’t get personally offended. With Klout, we are putting a score next to your name and if a person feels like the data there about them isn’t correct it’s understandable that they get upset.”

BONUS: What Klout’s New Topic Pages Look Like

To populate a user’s Topic Pages (see screenshots below), Klout analyzes the user’s content created across the 12 networks it calculates.


Clickable Topics on Your Dashboard


On your Klout dashboard, you can click on a topic to open its Topic Page.

Social Media Topic Page


For example, here's the social media Topic Page, which displays top influencers and top +K recipients.

Journalism Topic Page


Here's the journalism Topic page.

Top +K Recipients


You can click on "Top +K Recipients" to get a closer look at which users are snagging the most +Ks.

Best Content Stream


The "Best Content" tab will show you popular content from the past 90 days.

More About: blogging, klout, News, Social Media, social networking, WordPress

In answer to a direct question about whether his company was going to buy Yahoo at a forum at Stanford University in Silicon Valley this afternoon, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO Jack Ma said: “We are very interested.”

Said Ma: “We are very interested in Yahoo. Our Alibaba group is important to Yahoo and Yahoo is important to us … All the serious buyers interested in Yahoo have talked to us.”

Finally, at least one crystal clear answer in the confusion at Yahoo. More importantly, it is the first time Ma has indicated that he wanted to be a principal player in any deal around Yahoo rather than an element of a buying group.

Later, in answer to a question I posed about how he was going to do that, Ma said he wanted the “whole” company, but that the effort was complicated and included a number of players.

Again, he said: “We are very, very interested.”

I also asked him if he had visited Yahoo in his trip to California, which Ma said he has not in 15 days here so far. He said he has mostly been sleeping and eating, as part of a longer-term visit to the U.S.

Ma’s declaration came as part of a lively closing keynote speech at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he talked about the Chinese Internet company’s growth, focusing on how China is the next great Web economy.

Talking about competitors such as eBay, which have tried to enter the huge Asian market, he joked that “eBay might be sharks in the ocean, but Alibaba is a crocodile in the Yangtze.”

Of course, given his presence in Silicon Valley, one topic of interest was whether Ma would be heading over to visit nearby Yahoo and what role he will play in the current internal debate over the company’s future in the wake of the ousting of its CEO Carol Bartz.

The disposition on Yahoo’s Asian assets, which includes 40 percent of Alibaba and a large stake in Yahoo! Japan, are critical to the current strategic review of the company, since they make up a large part of its market valuation.

In comparison, the value of its U.S. and other global assets are small.

When later asked about his experience of being involved with Yahoo, which made a very canny investment by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang in Alibaba many years ago, Ma also said that he would do it again, but not in the same way.

The same way has to do with the level of foreign ownership, which Ma has been trying to reduce in a number of ways and which Yahoo has thus far resisted.

To answer a question about the fight between Ma and Yahoo over its Alipay fight, when Ma spun it out of Alibaba, he said the situation was tense, but that today “the problem is solved and I am half-burnt.”

He was referring to a settlement, which will require a lot of growth from the still-nascent online payment business.

Ma was asked later about the biggest misunderstanding in the U.S. about China and vice versa. “Our job is not to solve the misunderstanding,” he said. “Our job is to change ourselves to solve the problem.”

In another query about his relationship with Yahoo’s Yang, Ma called him a lifelong friend and also said he appreciated how much that meant to Alibaba’s beginnings.

“But, this is business and not personal,” Ma said about the current situation. “While we appreciate yesterday, but we are looking for a better tomorrow.”

The first line, for those not mad fans of the classic movie like me, is from “The Godfather.”

The question is, though, will Ma make Yang an offer he can’t refuse?

Thanks to Corvida on Google+ I ran across this rather cool how-to post that will let you experience Windows 8 as it should be experienced – on a tablet, and iPad at that.

The how-to is over at AppAdvice and involves an application called Splashtop Remote Desktop for iPad, an iPad, and Windows 8 installed on your computer; but here’s some basic info:

Steps:

Step 1: Install Windows 8 on your computer. Follow this guide to install it on your PC system or follow this one to set it up on a virtual machine.
Step 2: Purchase and download Splashtop Remote Desktop for your iPad ($4.99 on sale, usually $19.99).
Step 3: Install the Splashtop Streamer companion app on your Windows 8 machine.
Step 4: Set up Splashtop Streamer on your computer and set a password.
Step 5: Launch Splashtop Remote Desktop on your iPad.
Step 6: Select your computer when it appears on the list and have fun!

Here’s a video of it in action:

 

[Cross-posted at Winextra]



Windows 8 Finds a Comfy Home on the iPad is a post from: SiliconANGLE

We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.




In the same vein:Windows 8 to Bring New File Copy, Delete, and Move UIMicrosoft to Show a Pre-Beta Windows 8 on July 10More Details Regarding the Windows Store Coming in Windows 8No App Store for Windows 8, it’ll be Just Plain Ol’ Windows StoreWindows 8 Leaks – Screenshots are Nice but Details are BetterMetrofying the Desktop

The Kindle Fire appears to have catalyzed yet another tablet sale: the HTC Flyer will drop to $299 at Best Buy starting October 1, with no end to the sale in sight. This is the second big-name tablet that appears to be re-centering itself around the Kindle Fire's $199 price point.

Over the last couple of weeks, the BlackBerry PlayBook’s price slid down to a starting price of $299, $200 less than it initially retailed for at launch. The HTC Flyer, which is a 7-inch tablet like the PlayBook, will be getting the same discount. Meanwhile, the 10-inch 4G-capable HTC Jetstream is holding strong at $699.99 for a 32GB model.

Neither the PlayBook nor the HTC Flyer found much popularity while occupying the same price point as the iPad. The HTC Flyer has a 1.5GHz single-core processor and it’s still running a version of Android that isn’t designed for tablets (2.3 Gingerbread), though it is overlaid with HTC ’s Sense UX. The Flyer’s internal 16GB of storage can’t be expanded, but it does have a respectable set of cameras (1.3-megapixel on the front and 5-megapixel on the back) and comes with a stylus.

Best Buy is calling $299.99 the “permanent lower price” of the HTC Flyer, and it will apply both in-store and online. We’re a little thrilled that a company has finally set off a tablet pricing war, but these discounts may still not be enough to get back all the limelight the Kindle Fire has stolen.




Read the comments on this post

A new service is being launched by social media analyst industry leader PeopleBrowsr intended to compete with other influence-metric social media services like Klout—in fact, it looks exactly like a competitor directly to Klout. Just with a different algorithm and metric tracking system. Now, it’s been long argued that influence-guessing services like Klout are more about vanity than they are about really identifying reach and influence; but that hasn’t stopped them from receiving huge intake during investment rounds.

This revolutionary new influence-metric is called Kred and PeopleBrowsr says that it will be a fully transparent system of identifying and quantifying influence. The open invitation period starts October 6, 2011; but you can get into the docket early by posting a Tweet @PeopleBrowsr asking for access. The website states that it receives over 10,000 requests a day so it might take a while for the invitation to get back to you once they start.

“Kred is built on the fundamental belief that we are all influential somewhere,” said PeopleBrowsr CEO Jodee Rich. “Kred asserts the importance of trust and sharing in human relationships. By allowing individuals to be recognized as influential about their passions, Kred shifts the attention on social networks from celebrities back to the true heart of human relationships–connections with trusted friends and subject matter experts.”

After all, we know how social media gets around. Recently satirical news site The Onion managed to cause a little bit of a scare by posting what seemed to be actual news. Media like Twitter and Facebook provide bite-sized eyeblinks into sometimes partially-formed thoughts as people develop their ideas and fling them out. This sort of behavior lends itself rapidly to Big Data mining, even such that it’s a fertile ground for a whole new type of expert scientist.

In a strange sort of off-method, Kred is one-upping Klout by permitting users to add “real life” honors to their Kred profiles—such as sports awards, academic honors, club members, or even frequent flyer status. In a lot of ways this feels a great deal more likely something Facebook would have than an influence-metric service. It leans heavily towards the vanity and far away from the big data analysis of actual influence (whatever that might mean in the social media sphere.)

However, in what might be a move that could be a tip-of-the-hat to what Big Data could mean for smart agents: Kred will attempt to judge the influence of a person on their audience and their region of expertise and offer suggestions on what might make fresh content. This sidebar means that whatever algorithm that Kred decides on will actively influence how their users choose to engage their own audiences—perhaps by looking at what other people are tweeting about, what’s trending, or maybe even recent news?

It’s difficult to tell right now; but according to PeopleBrowsr, the Kred algorithm’s data will be fully transparent and accessible via an API, which means that once it’s launched we’ll have insight into what makes it tick.

Watch SiliconANGLE for a full review once Kred goes into full swing and we have access to those levers and buttons.



Klout vs. Kred, the new Social Media Influence Metric on the Block is a post from: SiliconANGLE

We're now available on the Kindle! Subscribe today.




In the same vein:Kinect Games Help in Early Diagnosis of IllnessBig Data Travels around the World, TooBusiness Intelligence Uprising Centers on Social Media DataCustomer Experience Analytics Reveals Next Generation Consumer BehaviorSGI Lead Answers Big Data QuestionsGilt Groupe Raises a Fashionable $80-100M Amidst Rumors of Waif Thin Business Model

Samsung has agreed to make a number of changes to its Galaxy Tab 10.1 to keep the devices from getting banned for sale in Australia before the holiday shopping season. During hearings in Sydney, lawyers for the company agreed to remove two multitouch features patented by Apple in order to get the device on the market as soon as possible. On Friday, Samsung also offered Apple a proposed settlement agreement, which would let Samsung sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 as soon as next week.

Apple and Samsung are currently embroiled in as many as 23 lawsuits globally after Apple accused Samsung of "slavishly copying" its designs for the iPhone and iPad in its Galaxy S smartphones and Galaxy Tab tablets. Apple has been been requesting preliminary injunctions in a number of markets where it has filed claims against Samsung, including the US, the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia.

So far, Apple has been awarded preliminary injunctions against the Galaxy Tab in Germany and against some Galaxy S smartphones in The Netherlands. The hearings this week in Australia concern Apple's request for a preliminary injunction there, which could be decided as early as next week.

Throughout the proceedings, the numerous claims Apple brought were essentially reduced to three patent infringement issues, including two for certain multitouch-related features and one that relates to how multitouch-capable touchscreens are manufactured. Samsung agreed on Thursday to remove features that use certain heuristics to filter out "accidental" touch input as well as the "zoom bounce" effect that the iPhone uses when zooming past the minimum or maximum zoom level.

On Friday, Samsung told the court that it also made proposed settlement offer to Apple. The settlement, if Apple agrees to forgo its request for a preliminary injunction, would allow Samsung to launch the Galaxy Tab 10.1 as early as next week. The details haven't been made public, but it could at least bring a temporary truce while Apple presses for a full hearing by the end of the year. Apple's attorneys said of the proposed agreement that "[o]ur friend's inconvenience would be minimised and we would be comforted."

The hearing will continue again on Tuesday, and the judge has encouraged Apple and Samsung to settle the issue before her final decision is entered tentatively by the end of next week.




Read the comments on this post

Finding your way around a new airport—at least major ones in the US—just got a little easier with the help of Bing search. The new airport maps show you the location of terminals, ticket counters, restrooms, eateries, ATMs, and more.

To find a map of one of the 42 airports currently covered (Microsoft plans on covering more), just search for the airport name, code, or city on Bing and click on the map and then zoom all the way in. You can also enter in your flight number to get to a map link.

Google Maps covers airports, but doesn't yet show you a complete view of the inside like Bing does (comparing JFK on Google, I find there's only a Wendy's and a Our Lady of the Skies RC Chapel in Terminal 4 there).

To see the full list of the mapped airports covered now, you can check the Bing Maps Blog post below.

New Airport Maps for Bing | Bing Maps Blog via Tech Crunch

You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.

editors note: please refrain from posting personal comments. In case you find any comment abusive or personal, please report it to us.

Imagine you’re part of an average middle class family and you break the news that you want to be an entrepreneur. You want to change the world with your new idea. Imagine the months spent meticulously building the dream project. Imagine the fights over dinner on how you should just get a regular job. Imagine finally launching your product and tasting sweet success.

Now imagine an outdated Government regulation nuking an entire flourishing industry, taking your tiny dream along with it. This is the story of how TRAI’s SMS spam guidelines are killing my legitimate startup.

We started in early 2011, launching a private beta of our product called Textme, a service that makes website content shareable with any mobile phone in the country. The idea was simple, we provide a Textme button to every website. Any user who wants info from that site can click on the button and we send him or her an SMS with the appropriate content. The idea proved to be a hit and Textme was used over two million times by users demanding content from websites through our button.

Encouraged by our success, we arranged all kinds of loans and pooled in our personal money to develop the technology, buy servers and the best SMS services, all amounting to several lakhs. Working non-stop for 8 months we managed to build an evolved version of Textme ( presently waiting at http://ontextme.com ) which was due for a public release on the 23rd of this month. Then came the shocker.

On 27th Sept 2011 TRAI declared war on the SMS industry to which we were unwittingly part of.

The resulting regulation, aimed at amputating the SMS spam from an otherwise clean industry, instead damaged and crippled an entire legit businesses. There was a lot of loss to reputation as regular users who just wanted to send SMS to their friends were clueless as to what was going on.

Let me take you through the TRAI regulations to show you what it means and how it affects us (and similar services) -

#1 You are evil unless…

TRAI in great brevity declared the entire SMS industry to be anti-consumer and stated that unless you are a bank, a financial institution, a DTH operator, an Airline or an authorized agency of the Indian Railways, you fall under the “Promotional” category.

What this means is that unless my business is any of the above, TRAI believes I am sending unwanted messages to people. What we don’t understand is how they arbitrarily segregate businesses this way. Textme as an example, is a service in which people demand an SMS to be sent to their phones. I can think of many other responsible businesses like Burrp, Justdial, Flipkart and Bookmyshow among others where people demand to receive an SMS. How and why are we deemed “Promotional” ?

#2 The consequences of being “promotional”

Now that we’ve been bracketed into the “promotional” stereotype, TRAI begins the punishment :

140 million mobile phone users are pushed into a clueless registry called NCPR. This is effectively a walled enclosure where no “promotional” messages can reach.

To put this into perspective, Textme is a one-to-one messaging service. We send an SMS only when you ask for it. We do not send a message without verifying your mobile number and there’s only one sms sent for every request you make. We do not have any ads at the end of the sms. It’s as good as having a mobile phone on your screen. There’s nothing you can do on Textme, that you can’t do using your own cell phone. We just make it convenient and free.

Now with the TRAI rules, even if you are asking for your favourite website content through an SMS with Textme, it won’t get delivered. If you’re in the NCPR the SMS just won’t reach you.

These are hefty punishments for young clean entrepreneurs who don’t want to go into the bribe and hide cycle.

#3 The early sleepers

TRAI dictates that no SMS will be sent between 9pm to 9am irrespective of whether our customer is registered under the NCPR or not .

The more you read that statement, the more ridiculous it sounds. How is a web startup suppose to function only 12 hours a day? What are we supposed to tell our users and financiers? Shop closed? There’s a huge internet audience out there that logs in after 9pm and is awake till early morning. It’s around 30% of our volumes. The bigger web-based sms services like way2sms, 160by2 and fullonsms would give you a better picture of what volumes (or drop in revenues) we are talking about. We understand if you put a ban on bulk or group sms during this period, but a ban on one-to-one personal messaging through SMS API’s is totally unfair. We (and other similar services) are as good as a mobile phone on screen.

#4 The last nail in the coffin

No more sender id’s like TM-TRAFFIC, TM-FLIPKART or TD-BATRA. We now get an alpha-numeric code like TD-644100 or DZ-066152.

Earlier, I’d delete a message the moment I’d see the name of a telemarketer, but now I’ve to read it to know who it is from and then delete it. How is this helping curb spam? I can’t even reach out to the spammer without placing an official complaint. Services like way2sms, 160by2, etc allowed me to send a personal message to my friend through my mobile number as the sender id. This allowed the receiver to identify me naturally and reply to it conveniently. Textme used this technology too, but now our users will merely read LM-650787.

#5 The only way out? – NCPR promotional categories

TRAI declared that they would make 7 categories for promotional businesses and if a mobile phone user wishes, they can open up to any of these categories and allow messages in.

Now all the industries in the country have to choose between these 7 categories. We would for eg. fall under the  “Communication / Broadcasting / Entertainment / IT” category.

Let us clarify how this works. If you’re registered in the NCPR directory, you can white list a category of messages you’d like to receive. For example, if you’d like to receive alerts from your hospital, you’d logically pick the category called “Health”. Sounds good? No, it doesn’t! Now you’d also be unwillingly receiving alerts from health care, yoga and skincare brands. It gets even worse for Textme as the category we fall under also includes Broadcasting, Entertainment & IT. There are thousands of other companies who will spam under this category.

It takes 7 days to opt-in, opt-out or modify your NCPR preferences. Why should it take so long? This implies that we’ve to hope that our disappointed user will first opt-out of NCPR, then wait for 7 days and then return to us to try our service again.

Final thoughts

The regulations uploaded by TRAI online are filled with flaws and technical mistakes. Their usage of certain terms is inappropriate. They don’t know how to differentiate between a SIM and an API.  How is it that they’ve provided exemptions to international & very large local companies based on unknown criterias? Is it because they can exert more pressure? They’re conveying the image of a regulator which allows unfair competition and I wouldn’t be surprised if companies are trying to bribe their way out. Earlier, we trusted their intentions to be right, now we’re unsure as to what they’re running after.

Spam Protection & Privacy Policy are the two promises Textme ( http://ontextme.com ) makes. In fact, we’re a result of the demand for a spam free send to mobile service . There is absolutely no reason why one-to-one messaging services should be subjected to such ridiculous and impractical regulations. Instead of categories, users should be able to allow or disallow companies and services of their choice through an instant and convenient mechanism. We have all the mechanisms and limits to curb any kind of spam or promotional usage of Textme. Our daily limits for a logged in user are even lower than TRAI’s 100 sms / day.

The average age of our team is 22 years old. The half of our team which is still in college failed their exams and kept bunking lectures while the other half skipped their paying jobs to make this happen. We overcame all challenges – the technology, the intellectual property, the volumes, the social strength, the business model and most importantly an investment of a significantly large amount. (which is now on hold, thank you TRAI).

This TRAI regulation is a significant challenge to overcome and we need the support of fellow enterprises similarly affected. Give us a hand in rolling back (or revising) the regulation.

*

Dayson Pais has energy + enthusiam for all things web. He is the co-founder of Webly, a creative web agency, Epicwhale, a design and technology incubator and is now on his first consumer product Textme. He loves managing business operations and building websites, brands & designs. Catch him on twitter @dayson

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the authors personal views and not representative of views held by MediaNama

Amazon’s Kindle Fire won’t ship until Nov. 15, but already it’s the retailer’s top-selling gadget. Buoyed by a surge of preorders, the $199 upstart tablet is No. 1 on Amazon’s list of the 100 most popular electronics items. Numbers two through 10? All Kindles in different configurations.

Speaking with MediaNama, Vishal Anand, Burrp’s Business Head, summed up the entire Zomato Vs Burrp episode as a PR nightmare for the company and reiterated that Zomato blew things out of proportion. Earlier, Zomato had alleged that Burrp had copied a listing from their site (also read Zomato CEO, Deepinder Goyal’s interview), following which Burrp had also accused Zomato of poaching and posting fake reviews. Excerpts from our interaction with Anand:

MediaNama: How would you respond to Zomato’s allegations of copying listings?

Anand: India’s IPR laws allow any yellow pages business to list names, addresses and other contact details of businesses and no one has a copy right per-se on this. We have a data collection team of 100 people including data collectors who work for AskMe. We also have yellowpages.co.in under our business. I was really surprised and taken aback by all this brouhaha about that phone number on Saturday evening, and how Zomato chose to go public instead of resolving it by just giving us a phone call or sending us a mail.

There have been two such instances earlier and we’ve repected their requests and removed listings. This time, they accused us of data theft, implying that we scrape data, which is not true at all.

MediaNama: But you do agree that the listing was there on Burrp and that there were some goof-ups on the verification end?

Anand: You should do a Google search with the phone number in question and you’d see many more listings on different sites with the same phone number. Why singles us out? And our listings go in millions, they’re not just restricted to 150,000 so there is a possibility that our team missed out on one or two listings. We have checks and balances at each stage since we get tons of user submitted data. We don’t just get data through our collection team which works on the field but also from PR firms, then we have an editorial team which keeps a tab on new places. So at times it becomes challenging but if they had sent us a request, we would have removed it.

MediaNama: But Zomato says that there are more such listings on your website? Some with other Zomato phone numbers?

Anand: We strongly deny it. It is completely untrue. We didn’t do anything wrong. If we’d be stealing stuff, would we post it under our employee’s name? It’s a complete PR war just like Deepinder tweeted the other day. We’re their number one competitor. Listings are one entity but our specialisation was always in reviews, Zomato’s was in Menus.

MediaNama: Talking of menus, what about the menu with the Zomato watermark that appeared on Burrp?

Anand: Well we allow users to upload restaurant pictures. Someone might have felt that a menu would be a good idea and might have posted it. I’ll not accuse Zomato but even they could have done that.

MediaNama: And what about GPS coordinates?

Anand: Well again, we are partners with google and we use gps coordinates from Google maps. Google gives us 6 point coordinates, and they also use information from Burrp. All this is a lie spread by Zomato.

MediaNama: What about your counter allegations against Zomato hinting at poaching and fake reviews?

Anand: We stand by it. We don’t want to stoop down to their level and hit below the belt.

MediaNama: But you haven’t offered any real proof to substantiate them?

Anand: We want this to cool off and get back to business. We don’t want to take it any further. We know how they’ve come to know about our employee (Mangal) from one of our ex-employee working for them.

MediaNama: So are you taking any action against them? What is the further course of action?

Anand: We’ve settled things out, we’ve told them we’ll remove the listings in question. But there is no time frame that we have committed for doing this, unlike what Deepinder told you. Just let’s get back to business. It’s been a nightmare to resolve this thing.
*Subscribe to MediaNama: SMS (India only) | Facebook | Twitter | Daily Newsletter

One of the headline features of Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet is a completely new Web browser called Silk that is designed with a "split" architecture, allowing it to offload much of the heavy lifting to Amazon's cloud computing cluster for superior browsing performance.

When the user requests a webpage in Silk, the request will be routed to Amazon's servers in the cloud. Amazon will load the webpage on the server side, downloading all of the necessary content elements in parallel. After downloading the content, Amazon will send the compiled page—including HTML, JavaSript, CSS, and images—back to the device as a single stream of data.






Read the comments on this post

The gadget fixer-uppers at iFixit took delivery of a Thunderbolt Display—supplies are so constrained that Apple's flagship Chicago location doesn't even have one on display yet—and promptly took it apart in the name of science. What they found inside is basically a 27" iMac sans Intel processor and internal storage.

"Both sides of the logic board are packed with enough chips that it's hard to believe there's no computer inside this display," iFixit's Miro Djuric told Ars. Among the hardware on the logic board is a Light Ridge Thunderbolt controller, Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet controller, several USB 2.0 controller and hub chips, and an LSI open host controller interface. Like the 27" Cinema Display, it also features a 49W class D audio amplifier that drives 2 full range stereo speakers and a tiny embedded subwoofer. The included FaceTime camera is capable of full 720p HD resolution, an upgrade from the camera in previous displays.






Read the comments on this post

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is what everyone expected: A small tablet, mostly for consuming media, watching video, playing games, reading Kindle e-books, browsing the web, and goofing around in apps. It is also cheaper than expected, at $199 — less than half the price of Apple’s iPad.

There are some nice touches, like the “Silk” web browser, which does some of the page-crunching in the cloud, so web pages should theoretically load faster. And the software actually looks decent. Amazon isn’t screwing around.

So: How big of a threat is the Kindle Fire to the iPad?

I don’t see the Kindle Fire significantly disrupting Apple’s iPad business. I think both devices will sell well, and can easily coexist. I don’t think Apple will have any trouble finding iPad buyers, and I think the $199 price tag will attract many people to the Kindle Fire.

For now, the Kindle Fire isn’t as useful of a device — it’s a simple entertainment pad, whereas the iPad is already shaping up as the PC of the future. They will probably attract different buyers, and right now, the market is so small and nascent that there is easily room for both of them. Some people may buy a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad, but many others will want the richer iPad experience, and some may buy both and use them for different things.

Looking forward, we’ll have to see how much Amazon can do with the Kindle Fire software platform — both the OS and app ecosystem — and how tablet pricing shakes out.

My hunch is that Apple will remain well ahead of Amazon in software, hardware, and ecosystem, and therefore the iPad will continue to be the “premium” tablet indefinitely. Amazon may help force Apple to lower entry-level iPad prices, and Apple may even have to make a smaller iPad someday. But Amazon is not likely to take over Apple’s spot at the top of the tablet market.

Bottom line: The Kindle Fire isn’t much of an iPad threat yet. The real trouble will be for companies like Barnes & Noble, RIM, and Samsung, which are trying to sell 7-inch tablets that either cost considerably more or have poorer content and apps ecosystems.

Also: 500 days with the iPad

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated an electronic "man in the middle" attack that allows remote tampering with the Diebold AccuVote voting system. Argonne's Vulnerability Assessment Team has previously exposed the same sort of vulnerability in Sequoia AVC machines in 2009, and believe the attack could be used against a wide range of voting machines.

The attack requires tampering with voting machine hardware, and allows for votes to be changed as the voter prepares to commit them. But the devices require no actual changes to the hardware—the hardware required to make the attacks can be attached and removed without leaving any evidence that it had ever been there. The electronics in the demonstrated attack are simply jacked in between two components on the Diebold's printed circuit board using existing connectors.

VAT team leader Roger Johnston said in a video posted by Brad Friedman of the voting watchdog site The Brad Blog that the physical security measures taken to protect voting machines in many states are inadequate to protect them from pre-Election Day tampering. "They're often kept a week or two before elections in a school or church basement,"Johnston said. And the modifications can be made without picking locks or breaking seals on the devices.

Diebold has a shaky security history. In 2004, Johns Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin and a team of researchers revealed a broad set of cyber vulnerabilities in the AccuVote system. In the past, there have been suggestions that Diebold itself tampered with elections in Georgia in 2002.

But while cyber attacks would require a high level of sophistication, the electronic man-in-the-middle attack demonstrated by Argonne's VAT team requires only basic electronics skills, and about $10.50 worth of hardware. "Anybody with an electronics workbench could put this together," Argonne VAT team member John Warner said in the video.




Read the comments on this post

While most of the attention surrounding Amazon’s about-to-be-introduced tablet is around its feature set, it will also be interesting to see if the device raises any patent issues.

Oracle, Microsoft and Apple have all sued over Android, albeit in different ways. Oracle has sued Google directly, while Microsoft and Apple have sued particular hardware makers.

Microsoft and Apple both declined to comment ahead of any product introduction by Amazon. However, Microsoft’s deal with Samsung — and its related comments — reiterate the company’s position that it believes it is owed royalty revenue on each Android device sold.

Also, Microsoft and Amazon do have a patent deal covering the existing Kindle line and Amazon’s Linux-based servers.

The devil, of course, is in the details of just how Amazon does and doesn’t use Android. And there is always the question of what deals might quietly be in place, and which relevant patents Amazon might hold that it can claim are being infringed by any potential litigant.

As if the MySQL community doesn't have enough to worry about, a security firm is reporting that the MySQL.com website has been commandeered by hackers. And recent visitors to the MySQL.com website may have downloaded something other than the database software to their systems.

Web security firm Armorize reported in its blog today that the MySQL.com website has been turned into a launchpad for serving up malware attacks. Visitors to the home page of the site are hit with a JavaScript injection attack that has been planted on the site. The script opens an IFRAME to a malicious site, which in turn launches a BlackHole exploit "pack" that probes for known browser and plugin weaknesses and then stealthily installs malware on the visitor's PC. There's no warning button or action required by the user other than visiting the site to trigger the download.

Security blogger Brian Krebs reports that he had seen a post last week on a Russian hacker forum by a member offering to sell root access MySQL.com for $3,000. The site is owned by Oracle.





Read the comments on this post

The weekend witnessed a spat between popular restaurant guides, Zomato and Burrp, with the former alleging that Burrp was copying listings data from its website including proprietary data points such as location co-ordinates. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal, in his blog post, also included screen-shots of Burrp pages.

The evidence: pages from Burrp featured a custom phone number originally allocated by Zomato to facilitate table bookings, of which even the restaurant staff is not aware of.

The post also linked to the Linkedin profile of a Burrp employee who had added the listing, to show that it was not a user submitted listing. Zomato has also mentioned that Burrp’s listing included the same GPS coordinates for the restaurant, until the 5th decimal point, which a user is unlikely to submit along with the listing.

Zomato also adds that there have been similar instances in the past, and on informing Burrp, the response that they received was that these were user uploads.

Burrp’s side of the story

In a response to Zomato’s blog post, Burrp also posted one on its own blog, defending the accusation. It said that the request to add the business listing came via an email and that Burrp added details verbatim, in good faith. Further, it says that the phone number mentioned in the listing should have carried an extension number, without which it doesn’t connect to the business. So, if it was to copy the number, it did not make sense to leave the extension.

Burrp alleges that Zomato is the one which copied features from Burrp, is poaching Burrp employees from sales and content, and is putting fake reviews of  un-reviewed business and submitting them to Google. Burrp did not include any evidence in the post, to substantiate these counter-allegations.

Our Take

- For any local listings aggregator, listings are a vital asset which drive traffic to the website. These sites generate money form paid listings, which are in turn-dependent on traffic generated through search. So, even if it’s a question of a handful of listings, a local search business can not ignore it.

- User Generated content is a major liability for content players, and if it has a major role to play in the functioning of the business, it must be well moderated. There is no place for ‘good faith’ when you are susceptible to getting sued for copyright violation.

Nikhil adds: Under India’s new IT Rules, Burrp can be held liable for these listings for copyright violation, if it does not take them down on being notified by Zomato, or vice versa. If either of them refuses to comply with the request, the plaintiff can take the matter to court. Remember that previously, Cleartrip has also been accused of data theft.

- Zomato substantiated their accusations with proof, including screen-shots and links.  Burrp defended the accusations, but did not cite any proof. Why didn’t it include a screen shot of Zomato’s alleged fake reviews on Google?

- It seems like this was not just a one-off incident and Karthick Gopal earlier tweeted a picture (via Gautam John) of a restaurant menu with Zomato’s watermark being used on Burrp. Pluggd.in also published some listings from Burrp and Google, which featured the same Zomato phone number.

- On poaching employees, Deepinder Goyal replied to my tweet saying that Burrp has a high attrition rate and Zomato hired some of their best people. In any competitive industry, this is a normal practice, and in contrast with copyright violation, isn’t illegal. Note that there is no explicit allegation of database theft by Burrp. Readers should keep in mind that JustDial had sued Burrp’s sister company AskMe of database theft.
*Reach India’s Digital Industry Decision Makers: Advertise on MediaNama. Contact sales@medianama.com. For more info, click here.

90’s Internet: Nobody knows you’re a dog. 2011 Facebook Timeline: Everyone knows you’re a dog.

Lori Fena via Twitter

If Samsung really does plan to take a bolder stance in its intellectual property battle with Apple, it best clean up its own operations first. Because it’s tough to take the company’s claims of commitment to innovation and distinctive design seriously when it really does seem to have a penchant for … er … referencing the work of others.

Consider the wall of apps in this photo of the company’s new shop-in-a-shop in Italy’s Centro Sicilia, which appears to feature not only the iOS icon for Apple’s mobile Safari browser, but the icon for the company’s iOS App Store — three instances of it.

Embarrassing, particularly given Apple’s allegations that Samsung “slavishly” copied the design of its iPhone and iPad devices. It’s hard to imagine there’s a reasonable explanation for this. Samsung phones don’t support iOS apps and I can’t imagine Apple is making the company a version of Safari.

Now it’s possible this was a display left over from some other event or product, but still.

Samsung has not yet responded to a request for comment.

The FBI has announced that it has arrested LulzSec member Cody Kretsinger, 23, of Phoenix, Arizona, known as "recursion," charging him with conspiracy and the unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.

Kretsinger is accused of using SQL injection attacks to obtain confidential information from the systems of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Kretsinger and his co-conspirators are then claimed to have disseminated the stolen information via the LulzSec Web site, and publicized it on Twitter. The FBI also asserts that Kretsinger wiped his hard disk in order to avoid detection by law enforcement.

To hide his identity when performing the attack, the FBI claims that Kretsinger used VPN service HideMyAss.com. In spite of this, activity was traced to an address in Arizona.

Fox News is reporting that a second man was arrested in San Francisco, after allegedly attacking Web sites belonging to Santa Cruz County as part of an Anonymous operation. Fox is also claiming that search warrants have been executed in New Jersey, Minnesota, and Montana.

Big ups.

Earlier this month, police in the UK arrested two men claimed to be LulzSec member "Kayla". LulzSec spokesman Topiary was arrested in July, and the previous month, Ryan Cleary, who operated a LulzSec IRC server, was arrested. The ringleader of the group, Sabu, has tweeted that there are now only two LulzSec members at large.





Read the comments on this post

Hewlett-Packard's new boss is one of Silicon Valley's most successful women. She's also a free-spending political failure sometimes known as 'Evil Meg'
Meg Whitman faces a daunting task as she takes the job at one of world's biggest technology companies.
The firm's last three bosses have all left under a cloud. Carly Fiorina clashed with the company's beloved founding family and was dubbed the "anti-Steve Jobs" for all she did for HP. Her successor, Mark Hurd, was axed amid scandal involving a former porn star and accusations of fiddling his expenses. Léo Apotheker lasted 11 months and presided over a halving in the firm's value. The company's board is reportedly so dysfunctional most of them didn't even interview Apotheker, they were too busy arguing.
Whitman, former boss of eBay, is set to take over from Apotheker immediately, the company announced today. She has the advantage of being available as she is both a non-executive director of HP and failed to secure the last job she really wanted, the governorship of California, after spending a record $144m on her campaign.
"Meg is a technology visionary with a proven track record of execution. She is a strong communicator who is customer focused with deep leadership capabilities," HP chairman Ray Lane said in a statement. She is also a woman who, according to court documents, is referred to as "Good Meg" or "Evil Meg" by colleagues and who once ended up with a $200,000 legal bill after pushing over an underling in a meeting.
Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman, 55, is a Harvard grad who cut her teeth in toyland. She was in charge of Mr Potato Head among others at Hasbro and went on to work for Walt Disney before becoming one of Silicon Valley's most successful executives. She joined eBay, the online auction firm, in 1998 when it had just 30 employees and was instrumental in turning the firm into a global giant. In the process she built a $1.3bn fortune and became one of the hottest tech executives in the valley.
She is also one of the more notorious. Her career post-eBay has been patchy. The auction giant has been at war with Craigslist, the free listing site, for a number of years. In court documents it was revealed staff had dual nicknames for Whitman and that in her frustration with Craigslist brought out the "monster".
It wasn't the only time her aggressive side had been displayed. Whitman once shoved a communications officer, a move that ended in a law suit and a reported $200,000 settlement.
And the California voters proved immune to her tactics. With a total spend of $144m, mostly of her own money, Whitman spent $43 for each of the 4,127,391 votes she received in the 2010 election, losing to Jerry Brown, who spent $36m. During the campaign it was revealed that Whitman herself had not voted for 28 years, a record she described as "atrocious" and had ruthlessly dumped her longtime housekeeper when it emerged she was an illegal alien - and consequently a political liability.
HP will be hoping they have hired eBay Meg not California Meg. The knives are already out. "Worst politician ever to run worst tech company ever," said Gawker when she was appointed.
But for a woman who clearly relishes a challenge, perhaps HP is the next best thing to running California. They're both massive and maladjusted. And if it all goes wrong she, can always put her stuff on eBay.
Hewlett-PackardeBayCaliforniaTechnology sectorDominic Rusheguardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Facebook will soon allow its users to integrate all of their music, media, and lifestyle actions and interactions with their profiles, Mark Zuckerberg announced at Facebook’s f8 conference today. Connecting profiles to services like Spotify will allow users to fill out their own curated “Timeline,” so friends can see each others’ media activities both as individuals and aggregated over their entire network, a move that will explode the amount of content on the site.

The new arrangement is part of two new Facebook initiatives, one of which is the Timeline. Users can fill in their Timelines with both content pulled in from other services—say, an article “liked” on Ars Technica or a game played—as well as “real world” activities like photos or status updates. The real world content can be filtered by date into the timeline, so users can fill in their backstory on the site with everything that happened before Facebook existed: moves to a new city, first words as a baby, or every single relationship breakup pre-2004.







Read the comments on this post

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is poised to be named the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard later today after the markets are closed, said multiple sources close to the situation.

The full board of HP, which is meeting today in Silicon Valley, has not officially voted on the move and the situation could certainly change, but sources said it is nearly a done deal.

AllThingsD first reported on the CEO crisis at HP yesterday.

While there has been much speculation that the well-known Silicon Valley exec would be only an interim CEO for the troubled tech giant, several sources with knowledge of the situation said that she will be taking over leadership on a long-term basis.

At least that’s the plan — HP has had seven CEOs since 1999 and its current one, Léo Apotheker, has only been in the job for 11 months.

He will be fired, of course, with a nice, big (and appalling, considering the 47 percent drop in HP stock in his tenure) severance package as a goodbye-on-your-way-out.

As I wrote earlier today about HP’s need to act soon: “That’s more corporate marriages and exec beheadings than England’s Henry VIII!”

Whitman, who is nothing if not confident, is presumably going to try to keep her head about her, even though she faces a daunting task.

“Meg is not someone who wants to be a steward of a process to find another CEO for HP,” said one source. “She wants to run the company and be a strong leader for what she considers an important tech powerhouse.”

That makes sense, since at only 55 years old, sources said Whitman is not inclined to want to do a temporary fix-it job on a company as troubled and complex as HP.

Sources said Whitman has been contemplating taking another big exec job, after a 10-year stint at eBay, which was followed by an unsuccessful run as the Republican nominee for governor of California last year. Since then, she has been a part-time consultant at top venture firm Kleiner Perkins.

Her role there — which has largely been seen as a temporary one — has included acting as a strategic adviser to start-ups and evaluating investment opportunities. Extraordinarily wealthy from her stint at eBay, she has also been active with her family foundation.

Turning to Whitman would not be a surprise, given there are few execs in tech experienced enough to run such a large and complex organization as HP.

But Whitman will face a lot of scrutiny if she takes the job running HP, which has been rocked by sudden strategic shifts and failed forecasts as its markets have gotten increasingly competitive.

The stock has been hammered, of course, but rose sharply on the news of a change in top leadership yesterday.

HP shares are down five percent today, mostly due to the turmoil in the markets at large due to more significant global economic concerns.

Also of likely concern to investors is the fact that her experience has been in the consumer arena and not the enterprise or hardware space that HP plays most strongly in.

Interestingly, Whitman has recently hired her longtime communications consigliere Henry Gomez, who worked with her at eBay and also in her unsuccessful run for governor of California, as a consultant.

Which means, of course, the likelihood of some big news to manage.

More to come, of course, and I suppose it will soon be appropriate to extend a hearty welcome back to the tech show to Whitman (whom I’ve covered since her appointment as eBay CEO back in the day).

And, of course, to remind her: Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

For decades, the way bad news was broken was, as one official British report put it, “deeply insensitive”. Now we do it better, thanks to the efforts of one American widow. Sally Williams talks to her, and to policemen and doctors at the sharp end

Social media is now routinely used to augment reporting of public events. There are entire units in news organizations dedicated to getting stories from the audience, often under the awkward rubric of “user-generated content.” But why sift for events online when you can give your audience the tools to give you the story directly? Right now if I see a plane land in a river, I tweet it. Wouldn’t a news organization prefer that I send my eye-witness photo to the UGC editor instead?

Social media always attracts looks of derision but when rightly used especially for news reporting, it can be the best source we have.

Take a look at the “if it bleeds, it leads” approach expressed with chilling precision in the submission guidelines of the self-described “backbone of the world’s information system” – the Associated Press. On their website, the nation’s oldest news wire describes their mission “…to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability, and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.”
Sounds great. The problem is the AP’s editorial submission guidelines are doomed to produce mind-numbing, paranoia-inducing stories that are neither informed nor newsworthy.

Of course, you have to choose what to report as news but when you lay down strict guidelines, you are making a statement about what you wish to be considered as news.

"If this study is correct, the Internet will not produce a cocooned public square, but a free-wheeling multilayered Mad Max public square. The study also suggests that if there is increased polarization (and there is), it’s probably not the Internet that’s causing it."

On Tuesday, Facebook was awarded a major patent for “Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network”.

100 things we didn't know last year - Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th.

Monday's article at the Wall Street Journal, which provided confirmation of an Apple tablet device, had all the earmarks of a controlled leak. Here's how Apple does it.

It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of ``I feel hopeful!'' and later in the sense of ``I hope this year ends soon!''

I've modified an old newspaper box to deliver the latest headlines to my living room each morning, and I don't even have to fumble around for quarters.