Posted on 1251 February 2012 by FernanV in Technology
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Having found this holiday season that they cannot beat iPad, iPhone and iPod, toymakers have decided to join them, lining up a host of playthings that come to life when hooked up to the devices, gadgets that kids love to play with.
Industry insiders call them “AppCessories,” and expect a wide array of these items to be on display at the American Toy Fair, which officially kicks off in New York on Sunday.
“The manufacturers have realized this is a hot area, and they are all jumping on it,” said TimetoPlayMag.com Editor-in-Chief Jim Silver. “It is an opportunity to extend the ages you are selling to.”
The trend comes as companies, scarred by a holiday season when toy sales fell 3 percent in the United States, look beyond traditional toys to woo tech-savvy kids, many of whom have grown up playing on their parents’ smartphones or their own gaming consoles.
“Today’s gamer is looking for experiences in games that include the marriage of digital and analog, face-to-face, and off the board gaming,” Hasbro Chief Executive Brian Goldner said.
For a graphic on 2011 toy industry sales, see: link.reuters.com/rer56s
Hasbro, the maker of G.I. Joe toys and the Monopoly board game plans, to jump on the “AppCessory” bandwagon through its “zAPPed” gaming platform.
When you play with Hasbro’s “The Game of Life zAPPed,” you will still move your car from space to space and select your path to retirement on a game board, but now you spin, get paid, sue other players and make important decisions on your iPad, after downloading a free app. The game will cost about $25.
But Hasbro is not alone in this arena.
Canada’s Spin Master is betting big on an array of iPhone/iPod Touch and Android accessories under the “Appfinity” label.
“When you talk about the holy grail of toys, manufacturers have been trying to find a way to marry the tech and the toy world,” Spin Master spokesman Harold Chizick said, adding that appCessories might just be what they were looking for.
Spin Master hopes its “AppDrive” will appeal to racing enthusiasts by allowing them to use a steering wheel that can hold an iPhone, and play racing games using an app on the iPhone, while “Appfishing” will enhance “virtual fishing” using a rod that can hold an iPhone. Priced at $20 each, they will hit stores in the fall.
Industry goliath Mattel Inc will try to broaden the appeal of its classic brands such as Fisher-Price and Barbie as well as “Monster High” through its “Apptivity” line.
One product in this line is Fisher Price’s Laugh and Learn Apptivity Case, which is basically a $20 sturdy case that will protect parents’ iPhones from “dribbles, drool, and unwanted call-making.” The item, which features beads, a mirror and free learning apps, will help babies practice hand-eye coordination, Mattel says.
Toymaker WowWee, known for its little robot toys, will unveil its “AppGear” line, which combines physical toys with iOS and Android apps. For example, in Alien Jailbreak, which is an augmented reality shooter game, the player looks through his or her smartphone and tries to stop aliens from escaping from prison. AppGear products will be sold at about $10 to $20.
Companies such as Discovery Bay and Crayola also hope to offer compelling products in this category.
Rising teen cell phone ownership, growing demand for mobile computing devices such as the iPad, and the explosive demand for mobile apps are other factors boosting the trend.
As of September 2009, 75 percent of American teens age 12-17 had a cellphone, a number that has steadily increased from 45 percent in November 2004, a study by Pew Research Center showed.
“Until now, traditional retailers or brick-and-mortars have been unable to tap into this huge growing market. They’ve been left out of the app party,” said Mike Gonzales, creative director and digital brand manager for WowWee.
Like many others, Gonzales now sees “an opportunity to take a bite out of the app pie.”
At an event earlier this week, Toys R Us CEO Jerry Storch summed up the trend: “The combination of the physical world and virtual world is so powerful that it’s almost unexplainable.”
One of Storch’s favorites heading into the year is the follow-up to Activision’s “Skylanders,” a video game that comes with physical toys that spring to life on screen when they are hooked up to consoles such as Microsoft’s Xbox or Sony’s PlayStation. A chip inside the figurines stores a player’s progress in the game.
The latest iteration, called Skylanders Giants, will feature characters that are taller and have new kinds of power. The newer characters can also light up without needing batteries.
“Skylanders will be even larger in its second year than its first year. It could be one of the biggest toy franchises of all time,” Storch said.
While the toy industry is betting big on AppCessories, a few parents are skeptical.
Amanda Bergman, a New Jersey-based web editor and mom of two, said she would “probably not” buy toys and games that will come to life with an iPad or iPhone.
“Sounds like kind of a hassle, to be honest. I’d prefer to maintain the separation between toys and iPad! And I feel like the novelty would wear off quickly,” said Bergman, who normally lets her children, 3-year-old Elliott and 5-year-old Adrian, spend one to two hours on average on her iPad.
Apple Inc makes the iPhone, iPad and iPod.
(Reporting By Dhanya Skariachan; Additional reporting by Liana Baker; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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Posted on 943 February 2012 by FernanV in Technology
Although Apple‘s popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn’t a big hit with folks who’d like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.
While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn’t yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple’s own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn’t perfect.
Walt Mossberg’s review of a new app and service that brings the full, Windows versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint to the iPad, free of charge.
This week, Onlive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it’s free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.
I’ve been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple’s app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.
My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad’s touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.
Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn’t a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.
OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn’t actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)
In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.
Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don’t live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won’t be available until a few days after the app becomes available.
To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log into a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you’ve saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn’t able to test that capability in my pre-release version.
Because it’s a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won’t work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.
OnLive
The OnLive Desktop app stores documents in a cloud-based repository.
The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there’s no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can’t install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.
In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, “priority” access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.
The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.
In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.
OnLive Desktop can’t use the iPad’s built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows’ limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren’t a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can’t send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can’t use a mouse.
Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can’t, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn’t support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.
OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad’s Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.
But, in my tests, I have found those tricky to use. They require you to leave your computers running and either install special software or learn to use certain settings.
Overall, I found OnLive Desktop to be a notable technical achievement, but it has so many caveats that it’s best for folks who absolutely, positively need to use the full, genuine versions of the three big Office productivity programs on their iPads. For everyone else, the locally installed Office clones are probably good enough, and simpler to use.
—Find his columns and videos, free, at walt.allthingsd.com.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com
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Posted on 612 February 2012 by FernanV in Technology
The standard price of a smartphone running one of the modern mobile operating systems is typically $200, with a two-year service contract. Recently, there have even been a few, largely unsuccessful, attempts to boost prices to $300.
Walt Mossberg reviews Nokia’s Lumia 710, the $50 device that gets the most common smartphone tasks done for a bargain price.
But phone makers and carriers have been eager to push smartphones into lower price bands to expand the market. Older and more basic models have been showing up for less. Multiple Android models sell for around $100, and a few well below that. Even Apple, which established the $200 standard, sells its iPhone 4, which is outwardly identical to the current iPhone 4S, for $99. And its 2009-vintage iPhone 3GS is free with an AT&T contract.
So this week, I tested a new $50 smartphone to see what you get for that kind of money. It’s called the Nokia Lumia 710, and it runs Microsoft‘s Windows Phone operating system, the much-praised, but late and struggling, competitor to Android and the Apple iOS software that powers the iPhone.
Nokia
The Nokia Lumia 710 runs the same Mango version of Windows Phone as costlier models, with its bright tiles that can show live data, like the weather or favorite photos.
After a week of testing the Lumia 710, my verdict is that it’s a good value for the money, and a good choice for people moving up to their first smartphone, or those looking for an alternative to Android and Apple. It has some notable weaknesses and drawbacks, and it doesn’t compare with the iPhone 4S or elite Android models like the Samsung Galaxy S II. But it’s a decent phone that gets the most common smartphone tasks done.
I chose the Lumia 710 because it isn’t an old model or one that runs an outdated version of software. In fact, it’s the first Windows Phone device from Nokia, Microsoft’s principal phone partner, to be offered by an American wireless carrier—in this case, T-Mobile. And it was designed to be a low-cost alternative to most other smartphones, to boost the tepid sales of Windows Phone devices and to launch Nokia’s bid to regain a significant share of the U.S. market.
T-Mobile is promoting the phone heavily in its stores and in national TV ads, and says it will be a major focus for the carrier this winter. Wal-Mart is pushing it for $18.88 in its stores and free online, with a contract, according to T-Mobile and Nokia.
Though it’s the vanguard, the Lumia 710 won’t be the flagship of Nokia’s new Windows Phone line. An entirely different model, the larger but sleeker Lumia 900, is coming from AT&T, probably in March. It will boast a bigger, better screen, more storage and features and a better camera. No price has been announced, but it will certainly cost more than $50.
Another higher-end Nokia model, the Lumia 800, already is available overseas, but hasn’t been picked up yet by U.S. carriers.
The 710 is a somewhat thick, rounded phone that comes in black or white and has a 3.7-inch screen—bigger than the iPhone’s, but much smaller than the huge displays of 4.5 inches or more on some of the newer Android models.
The phone is plastic and fairly light, but doesn’t seem cheap or flimsy. It has a rubbery, curved back and feels good in the hand. And unlike many new smartphones, the back is removable and the battery is replaceable.
Walt Mossberg tests out Nokia’s Lumia 710 smartphone and finds it’s a good value for users looking to enter into the smartphone market. The Lumia 710 runs Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system and connects to T-Mobile’s 4G network.
This phone runs on T-Mobile’s 4G network, which I have consistently found to be much slower than Verizon’s latest 4G technology, now also being rolled out by AT&T. In my tests, downloads averaged about 2 megabits per second, which isn’t much better than on many 3G phones.
The 710 runs the same Mango version of Windows Phone as costlier models and, in my tests, was generally snappy, though it lagged in a few instances. Like all Windows phones, it has a dedicated button that launches the camera even when the phone is locked. However, Windows Phone has about 10% of the third-party apps as the iPhone.
I was able to use all the main features of Mango, which distinguishes itself from its competitors with a user interface made up of bright tiles that can show live data, like the weather or favorite photos, even before you tap them to open apps. Mango’s “hubs”—features that aggregate information such as your friends’ contact info and social-networking status—also worked fine.
I was able to sync the phone with both a Windows PC and a Mac, using Microsoft software, to add music, photos and videos.
So what corner-cutting was done to get the price down? What are the missing features? One is the absence of a front camera, which means you can’t do video chats on the 710. Also, the phone can’t be used as a Wi-Fi hot spot to connect other devices, like laptops, to the Web. It has only 8 gigabytes of internal storage, which can’t be expanded. The base line for most other new smartphones is 16 gigabytes.
In addition, I found the 5 megapixel rear camera to be no better than adequate, with some pictures I took rapidly coming out fuzzy, though most others were acceptable.
I found the phone’s buttons required more pressure than they should have. The screen, while decent-looking when viewed straight on, was harder to read from an angle than on most competing smartphones.
I didn’t perform a formal battery test, but found the phone’s battery made it through the day in mixed, light-to-moderate use. Sound quality was good and calls didn’t drop.
T-Mobile’s service plans for the Nokia Lumia 710 start at $60 per month for 500 minutes of voice, unlimited texts and a paltry 200 megabytes of data. But the carrier recommends a plan that costs $80 monthly and boosts the data portion to unlimited (T-Mobile slows your connection if you exceed 5 gigabytes of data during the month.)
Bottom line: Nokia will soon have flashier, high-end Windows Phone models in the U.S., but you can get a lot for less in the Lumia 710.
—Find all of his columns and videos at walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.
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Posted on 226 February 2012 by FernanV in Technology
When my great grandfather signed his World War I draft registration card in 1917, I’m pretty sure he never imagined I’d be examining it 95 years later with a touch screen sitting on my lap.
This week, I took a fresh look at this and several other gems from my family history with help from a company that has led the charge in online genealogy for 15 years: Ancestry.com. Thanks to mobile apps, other users and a new ability to synchronize content between the Web and desktop software, Ancestry has grown into a robust tool.
TKTK
The World War I draft card for the author’s great grandfather.
Since I last tested Ancestry in 2006, the company has revamped its desktop software program, Family Tree Maker, so the program can synchronize with Web-based data on Ancestry.com. It’s now available as a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad and Android phones. And the site holds over eight billion records, including content from a partnership with the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The addition of mobile apps plus the syncing feature make Ancestry.com more useful and will bring me back to the site more often. I found several new things on Ancestry this time around, including more census data, ship manifests for two cruises an aunt took, and more suggested family-tree data from other users.
I tested Ancestry.com, its iPhone and iPad apps and the Family Tree Maker desktop software on a Mac. I found a computer to be the best tool for inputting family information like names, birth dates, death dates and locations using Ancestry.com and the Family Tree Maker software. The iPad app was the most enjoyable way of exploring my family-tree records. The site’s pricing can be confusing given the various membership and access levels.
A simple right-to-left swipe on the iPad screen shifted my view of the tree from one branch to the next. In four swipes, I dove back in time to read about my mother’s father’s mother’s mother, Florence Antonia Ford, and her family in the 1910 Census record. Using the iPad on my lap, related records from Ancestry felt more personal than seeing them on a computer. A pinch-to-zoom gesture let me clearly read names and details in each record. (Records can be magnified on a computer screen as well, which is helpful when studying small cursive writing or type, like a 1935 passenger list for a cruise to Bermuda that included my Great Aunt Romayne’s name.)
I was delighted to find data I entered on Ancestry.com six years ago was still in my account, which saved me the trouble of inputting everything again. A new feature called TreeSync let me synchronize all of my family-tree information over to my Family Tree Maker desktop software, and vice versa. After using the Ancestry app on my iPad and adding records to my family tree, I easily synced that data with my desktop software by clicking a top-right button when I next opened the Family Tree Maker.
Users who have spent years on Family Tree Maker software, which has been around for 23 years, will be able to sync data from their PCs to the Web version of their family trees. They can now opt to make their trees public for all Ancestry users to access, thus growing the online database.
I found the desktop software to be more heavy-duty than the website and mobile apps, but its interface is a bit antiquated in comparison.
Ancestry.com
Winston Churchill’s family tree seen via Ancestry.com’s app on the iPad.
Whenever Ancestry.com has a “hint” to show you about a name you entered on your tree, a green leaf appears beside that name. Selecting that leaf lets you see anything in the Ancestry database that may be associated with that name. These could include paper records scanned in by Ancestry.com or content entered by other people. You can view these hints and, if applicable, merge that data with your own after viewing a side-by-side comparison of your information and the new information.
You can share your findings with friends via Facebook, Twitter or email. When I saw my grandfather’s signature on his World War I draft card, I clicked one button and shared this digitized memento from 1917 with friends and family on Facebook. Content shared from Ancestry.com can be seen by other people, even if they don’t have an account, for up to 14 days. You also can keep everything private.
I know quite a bit about my family history, thanks to work my grandfather did years ago, and this helped me with entering names and knowing which hints were relevant or not. For example, an Ancestry-suggested hint that a record for Florence Ladley was for Florence Antonia Ford in my tree wasn’t accurate. I made the most progress when I called my parents for more names and dates.
Ancestry.com offers a free 14-day trial, after which fees range from $13 to $35 a month, depending on six-month or monthly memberships and whether a person is paying for U.S. Discovery (all records in the U.S.) or World Explorer (unlimited access, including records from other countries) access. The Family Tree Maker software, which starts at around $32, can be downloaded to Macs or Windows PCs or bought in stores. Combined pricing for the desktop software and access to the website starts around $40.
—Email katie.boehret@wsj.com.
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Posted on 3156 January 2012 by FernanV in Technology
Editor’s note: Andrew Keen is a British-American entrepreneur and professional skeptic. He is the author of “The Cult of the Amateur,” and the upcoming (June 2012) “Digital Vertigo.” This is the latest in a series of commentaries for CNN looking at how internet trends are influencing social culture.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Andrew Keen
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Posted on 2808 January 2012 by FernanV in Technology
Rick Holliday
Technicians monitor production at a recent service at North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga. The church is developing custom apps for congregants and their children.
Andrea Davis has created a new wing of her church: her car.
When Ms. Davis, 45 years old, has downtime from her job helping manage parking for University of Tennessee-Knoxville sporting events she’ll settle in to her Honda Civic to catch up on sermons via audio and video from her church’s free, custom-made smartphone app.
“I feel that anywhere you go, you should carry that spirit with you,” says Ms. Davis, who holds a second job as a teaching assistant and lives 45 minutes away from Faith Promise Church located in Knoxville, Tenn. “It’s like I’m there and not missing anything.”
App developers say more than 150 churches across the U.S. have had customized smartphone and tablet apps created to connect with their members. The church apps are a relatively new twist on the broader influx of technology into religious life that includes popular apps for prayer and even making confessions.
Pastors and parishioners say the technology can enable people to uphold the call to stay religiously involved at all times, not just on Sunday. App developers expect thousands of churches to develop the apps in coming years to meet demand from worshipers.
Looking to confess your latest sin? Or seeking a Jewish blessing for your meal? There’s an app for that. Today’s worshipers are looking to mobile technology to supplement their faith and are beginning to challenge the norms of religious practice. WSJ’s Christina Tsuei reports.
Some specialized apps help parents keep track of what their children are studying in Sunday school and offer discussion tips. Church leaders also hope the apps will entice teenagers to stay involved with their churches and will help provide spiritual guidance when they’re away.
“That’s their world: their iPhone. If it ain’t in their pocket, it’s not real,” says Tom Wray, a consultant within the Archdiocese of Cincinnati who has promoted such apps to Catholic churches.
So far, mostly large, mainline Protestant and evangelical churches have had customized apps made, developers say. Typically, the apps aggregate information including a pastor’s blog, church calendar and sometimes a public, digital wall on which congregants can request and offer prayers.
“We’re trying to spread the message and content of each church; get outside of their church walls during the week,” says Matt McKee, a former pastor and founder of ROAR, based in Alpharetta, Ga., which creates such custom apps.
A custom app from Redeemer Church in Utica, N.Y., where about 1,700 people attend on an average weekend, has been downloaded about 3,700 times, says Sam Luce, a pastor at the church. A “prayer” tab launched in May of 2010 enabling users to request and confirm prayers has so far notched nearly 14,000 hits, says Mr. Luce. He says Redeemer is looking into building another app for its youth group.
Rick Holliday
Brian Cregan shows his wife Ali, son Teddy and daughter Mia one called ‘ParentStuf.’
Pastors and religious officials say the feedback on the apps has been largely positive. But the openness has raised some concerns about privacy and security, especially for small congregations that don’t have the resources to monitor activity as closely as big churches with sophisticated, fully staffed media operations.
Rabbi Dan Cohen reads from an iPad and Kindle during services and events at Temple Sharey Tefilo-Israel in South Orange, N.J. Although he is working on getting a custom app made for the synagogue, concerns about security, privacy and wary congregants have led him to move slowly, he says.
“I want to make sure we’re doing things in a way that’s keeping in our values with the community,” he says.
At Faith Promise, where about 4,300 people attend weekly, volunteers scan websites and apps regularly to ensure content remains appropriate, says Kyle Gilbert, the church’s pastor of communications. Problems, such as when a man posted inflammatory comments about his ex-wife on the prayer wall, are rare, he says.
Companies including Yaptap in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Memphis-based Everchurch, have produced non-customized apps. Everchurch’s parent company, Speak Creative LLC, has also developed websites for hundreds of churches.
So far, two small firms that often work together, Mobile Roadie LLC and ROAR, have dominated development of custom-made apps for individual churches. Mr. McKee founded ROAR in January of 2010 and named it for references to Jesus as the Lion of Judah, “and when a lion roars, you can hear it three miles away,” he says.
Celebration Church in Georgetown, Texas, was the first church to launch a customized app via ROAR in March 2010. About 60 churches followed in 2010, and more than 90 have created custom apps this year, Mr. McKee says.
Churches pay a setup fee between $500 and $750, plus $35 each month for hosting. Building custom apps in general can cost tens of thousands of dollars, but ROAR charges the churches less, says Mr. McKee.
ROAR instead hopes to make money through partnerships and licensing fees with publishing companies that supply content to churches, such as LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, Mr. McKee says.
Brian Cregan, 43, uses the “ParentStuf” app on his iPad to stay abreast of what his daughter Mia, 9, learns in classes at North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, which has about 13,000 weekly attendees.
“Now I know what they’re doing and what they’re talking about,” he says.
Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com
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Posted on 2808 January 2012 by FernanV in Technology
RABAT |
Fri Jan 27, 2012 7:34am EST
RABAT (Reuters) – Viadeo, the world’s second-biggest online networking site for professionals after LinkedIn, said on Friday it had opened a regional branch in Morocco as it seeks to expand its presence in the increasingly-wired Arab world.
Viadeo, which targets professionals, job seekers and recruiters, shelved plans for an initial public offering last year to focus on growth in emerging markets.
“Morocco is the first country in Northern Africa and within the Arab world where Viadeo has established an office; this follows the opening of an office in Senegal in March 2011,” Viadeo said in a statement.
Morocco accounts for a quarter of Viadeo’s 2 million members in Africa. The increasing use of Internet and high youth unemployment in the Arab world, which hovers around 30 percent in Morocco, is a boon for businesses like Viadeo.
“The membership base in Morocco has doubled in less than a year and represents the second French speaking community of the platform after France,” it said.
(Reporting By Souhail Karam; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
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Posted on 1913 January 2012 by FernanV in Technology
One reason Apple‘s iPad continues to dominate the tablet market after 17 months may be that all the main competitors look like imitations but don’t deliver as good an experience. They are typically flat slabs, like the iPad, priced about the same or more, but with many fewer apps, shorter battery life, usually greater weight and thickness and a weaker ecosystem for music, video, books and magazines. Whatever advantages they have—like added ports or the ability to play Flash video—haven’t been enough to sway consumers or developers.
Despite its shorter battery life and fewer apps for its Android operating system, the new Sony Tablet S has excellent ergonomics and is a decent alternative to the iPad, WSJ’s Walt Mossberg says.
Now, Sony, whose brand and reputation for design have long resonated with consumers, is trying something different. On Friday, it is launching a handsome tablet with an unusual, asymmetrical design and some software tweaks and content services it hopes can set it apart from the pack.
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I’ve been testing this device, called the Sony Tablet S, and I generally like it, despite some weaknesses and some features that aren’t yet fleshed out because they won’t be fully rolled out at launch. The Tablet S will appeal to buyers who would like a distinctive tablet from a trusted company that doesn’t look like an iPad wannabe.
Like dozens of other tablets, Sony’s new entry uses Google‘s Android operating system. And it costs the same as the Wi-Fi-only iPads—$500 for a 16 gigabyte model and $600 for a 32 gigabyte model. The Tablet S has no cellular-data option. It’s also late to the game, and, in my tests, had significantly weaker battery life than the iPad 2.
However, the Tablet S looks nothing like the iPad 2 or any other current competitor. One of the long sides of its rectangular, plastic body has a thick, rounded edge that makes the device look like a folded-back magazine. In fact, Sony has carried this effect over onto the back, continuing the black curve with a molded black plastic sheet that looks like the rest of the magazine cover laying over a flat, gray surface.
Laying the Tablet S, left, in landscape, or horizontal, mode, creates a natural angle for typing. Coming this fall, the Tablet P, right, which unfolds to reveal twin 5.5-inch displays.
While this design makes the Tablet S much thicker than many competitors, it has several advantages. When you hold the device one-handed in portrait, or vertical, mode, it feels much more comfortable and balanced than any other tablet I’ve tested. When you lay it on a flat surface in landscape, or horizontal, mode, the rounded edge creates a natural angle for typing, without a case or stand.
This clever design makes the Tablet S feel lighter than the iPad when you hold it vertically, because more of the weight is in your palm—even though the two tablets are almost exactly the same weight.
At 9.4 inches, the bright, vivid screen on the Tablet S is smaller than the iPad’s 9.7 inch display or the 10.1-inch screen of Samsung’s comparable Galaxy Tab model. But I found it plenty generous, and it didn’t feel cramped. The Sony is about the same length as the iPad 2, but is narrower, and I found this proportion pleasing.
This clever design makes the Tablet S feel lighter than the iPad.
There are some trade-offs to this design. While it is beautifully balanced in vertical mode, it feels top-heavy in horizontal mode, especially because Sony forces you in that mode to hold it by the thin, lower edge. You can’t rotate the screen in horizontal mode so the thicker edge is at the bottom. Performance was snappy, and the front and back cameras took acceptable still photos and videos.
Sony is planning a second, even more radical tablet for later this fall, called the Tablet P. It’s a much smaller and lighter device that has no visible screen until you unfold it to reveal twin 5.5-inch displays that can either be used as one large screen or can have separate content in each. I have played briefly with this coming device, but haven’t been able to test it.
Unlike the iPad 2, the Tablet S has an SD memory-card slot, which I used to move movies, photos, music and documents to the Tablet S from a Mac. It worked fine, though the plastic hinge for the little door that covers the slot sometimes got stuck.
While Sony, like Apple, has long been praised for hardware design, it has never been able to match Apple in software and services, except on its PlayStation game consoles. The company is hoping the Tablet S changes that perception.
The Tablet S starts with the same software disadvantages as its Android brethren. While Android has a healthy selection of over 250,000 third-party apps (versus 425,000 total for Apple’s mobile devices), it has pathetically few tablet-optimized apps—estimated to be just a small fraction of the 100,000 tailored for the iPad.
But Sony has added some nice software features to the Tablet S. Some make navigation easier, but many aim to build on Sony’s strengths as a media and gaming company. Unlike Apple, which takes a broader view of the tablet’s potential, Sony sees its tablet as primarily an entertainment-consumption device.
For instance, Sony has added a small, customizable row of frequently used app icons at the upper left. At the upper right of the screen is a handsome, easy-to-use feature called Favorites, which highlight recently accessed or added songs, videos, pictures, books and Web bookmarks.
Sony also has tweaked the Android browser so it loads pages faster. In my tests, pages loaded slightly faster than on the iPad.
There is also a universal remote-control app that works with a built-in infrared transmitter to control TVs and other home-entertainment devices, even if they aren’t made by Sony. In my tests, I easily configured it to control my Pioneer TV and my TiVo, though it was unable to mate with my Apple TV.
Sony also is bundling services for buying music, TV shows and movies, e-books and games to create a content ecosystem like Apple’s. Unfortunately, these weren’t available for me to test.
The music service won’t be available until later this month, but it will be a subscription service with two monthly tiers, one for $3.99 and one for $9.99. The video service will be available with a very limited selection at launch, but the full service won’t appear until next month. It allows you to rent videos starting at $2.99 each. The games service will come along later this year, and Sony couldn’t provide details, except that it will offer PlayStation games meant for portable devices. The Tablet S will come with a trial membership to the music service and a free movie and e-book. It also comes preloaded with two simple games.
The Tablet S fell far short of the iPad 2 in my battery tests, where I play videos back to back with the network connection on and the screen brightness set at 75%. It died after 6 hours, 38 minutes, which is a whopping 3½ hours less than the iPad 2 lasted.
Still, Sony deserves credit for creating a novel design with real advantages and for building in some useful software. The Tablet S is worth considering when shopping for a tablet.
—Find all Walt’s columns and videos at the All Things Digital website, walt.allthingsd.com.
Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com
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Posted on 2433 September 2011 by FernanV in Technology
Story By: - Paul Levinson, author of “New New Media” and Fordham University professor
- Paul Levinson, author of “New New Media” and Fordham University professor
“We’ve seen a huge evolution in the purposes that flash mobs have been used,” she says. “Some can be used for progressive purposes, but they can also be used for rioting, hooliganism or gang activity.”
Flash mobs set up via Twitter and Facebook have appeared at BP gas stations to demonstrate against the company’s handling of the Gulf oil spill. In Switzerland, Greenpeace organized a flash mob in which more than 100 people pretended to drop dead to protest nuclear power.
Social media tools also were linked to riots this summer in Vancouver and across Britain.
Behind The Masks
Anonymous claimed responsibility last month for hacking into some 70 law enforcement websites, garnering “a massive amount of confidential information,” including emails and credit card numbers. The move was in retaliation for the FBI arrest of 16 suspects for their alleged involvement in the PayPal denial of service attack.
Gabriella Coleman, a professor of media, culture and communications at New York University, says Anonymous at first used Internet forums to organize, and has since expanded its reach through social media sites.
2003: Anonymous originates on Internet forums such as 4chan and Internet Relay Chat as a loosely affiliated group of hackers with little or no defined social agenda.
2006: The loosely organized collective carries out some of its first major acts of online mayhem, including a distributed denial of service [DDoS] attack that disables the website of radio host Hal Turner, known for racially charged remarks.
2008: Anonymous launches Project Chanology in retaliation for the Church of Scientology’s demand that YouTube remove a church video interview of actor and Scientologist Tom Cruise. In addition to launching DDoS attacks against Scientology websites, followers wearing masks of Guy Fawkes turn out for street protests at church centers mostly in the U.S. and Europe.
2009: Following the Iranian presidential election, with its widespread accusations of vote-rigging, Anonymous launches a website supporting the Iranian Green Party with the aim of skirting official censorship.
2010: Anonymous launches a DDoS attack against Australian government websites in retaliation for Canberra’s plan to implement anti-child-pornography Internet filtering software.
The group launches Operation Payback in support of WikiLeaks and its embattled chief, Julian Assange. Denial of service attacks hit the websites of PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and Amazon.
2011: Anonymous launches various operations in support of the Arab Spring, including denial of service attacks and hacks against government websites in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordon and Morocco.
Operation BART draws followers into San Francisco train stations to protest the Bay Area Rapid Transit system’s decision to shut down cell phone service on the trains in an effort to quash an anti-police protest. Anonymous also hacks a BART website.
— Scott Neuman
It has also spawned splinter groups such as Lulz Security (recently disbanded) and the Anti-Security Movement (still active) that have gone on to launch their own hacktivist attacks.
As the group’s name suggests, anonymity â particularly the kind that can be found in cyberspace â is important to many of its followers. Giving it up doesn’t come lightly. Members typically show up at protests sporting a mask in the likeness of the 16th century English radical Guy Fawkes.
Many Anons are in their 20s and 30s, but a few are in their 60s â the “grandfathers” of the movement, says Coleman, who is writing a book on Anonymous.
“There is a sort of across-the-board free-speech sensibility that many Anons share, which many geeks and hackers share,” she says. “The libertarian label, though, ends at, ‘We believe in free speech.’ “
While free speech and anti-censorship is a key part of the group’s ideology, there’s also a definite leftist and anti-capitalist strain in some Anons. “Beyond that,” she says, “it’s a pretty diverse lot.”
An Imperfect Union
Mark Rasch, who led the Justice Department’s computer crime efforts for eight years, says Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites have “created this online community that didn’t exist before.”
Now, he says, “a relatively small group of people can do a lot of damage to a large and sophisticated organization.”
But neither Rasch nor Fordham University’s Levinson thinks flesh-and-blood protests will eclipse online attacks among hacktivist groups.
“Why protest [in public] and risk getting caught if I can do it from my living room?” says Rasch, who is now director of cybersecurity and privacy at the Falls Church, Va.-based consulting firm CSC. And Levinson points out that “it’s easy to do things online; it’s hard to get people into the same physical space for a protest.”
Molnar of the New School acknowledges that online activists tend to be less cohesive than social protesters in the past, who typically met face to face and knew more about one another.
“The threshold for participation is much lower because of the nature of the new technology,” Molnar says. “You do not have to be integrated into a closely knit network or even a formal organization, so these organizations tend to be much looser, much more diffuse, and they often mobilize a lot of strangers that are not strongly involved in the movement itself, unlike the student movements in the 1960s.”
“I think the bigger challenge is to keep these people engaged over the long run,” she says.
Online activist groups may disintegrate more easily, but Molnar says that “in particularly important moments, they might be able to make a bigger splash than a formal organization that has a much longer shelf life.”
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Posted on 2748 August 2011 by FernanV in Technology
San Francisco (CNN) — Ross Turk would be happy to explain the tattoo on his arm.
By now, he’s used to the penguin being met with bewildered stares. It represents, as he’d tell you, the Linux computing software, not the slightly less obscure character from 1950s cartoons.
"A lot of people see it and they think it’s Chilly Willy or something," the West Hollywood, California, man lamented in a recent interview. "The Linux logo is still kind of grass-roots."
When the then-21-year-old Turk got the logo etched into his left bicep in 2000, the penguin seemed poised to become mainstream, then appearing frequently in magazines and on the walls in computer stores. But the software market tumbled with the dot-com bust, and so too did the Linux brand, choked by investors’ swift rejection then of the open-source software movement.
Thursday marks 20 years since Linus Torvalds announced on a Web bulletin board that he’d begun working on a free computer operating system. In that message, Torvalds described Linux as "just a hobby, won’t be big and professional."
Now, two decades later, that market breakthrough doesn’t seem any more attainable. And yet while the Linux name and its penguin mascot failed to go big, the software they embody is more pervasive today than ever.
Linux’s skeleton and spirit live on inside another familiar, adorable mascot: the green robot that represents Google’s Android operating system. That software, which powers 43% of smartphones worldwide, many tablets and the Google TV set-top boxes, was developed with Linux at its core. Google’s Chrome OS for laptops is also based on Linux.
Another mobile system, webOS, sprouted from Linux. Hewlett-Packard says webOS, not the hardware that runs it, is a key asset from its acquisition last year of Palm. This month, HP took steps to discontinue its gadget production arm, but it will keep webOS. HP has discussed licensing the software to other vendors in order to expand webOS’s reach, perhaps into computing platforms on appliances and in cars.
Linux is already commonly installed on refrigerators with built-in TVs, car navigation systems, in-flight entertainment systems, public transit displays, ATMs and countless other machines. The Smart TV from Samsung Electronics, which competes with the Google TV, is also based on Linux. Sony previously allowed tinkerers to install versions of Linux onto their PlayStation consoles.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, Linux is practically everywhere.
"The fact that you don’t have to call it Linux is what makes Linux work," said Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation. His nonprofit organization was formed to promote Linux development to the industry and sponsors Torvalds’ ongoing work on the platform.
14 million lines of code
Linux can exist in so many places because, rather than being owned by one company, thousands of engineers contribute code to the kernel. (The kernel is the brains and sinew of the software, and Torvalds said in an e-mail that it’s the aspect of his work that he finds most interesting and that he spends most of his time developing.)
No one can claim ownership of Linux, and everyone is free to use it. The software contains 14 million lines of code and is protected by more than 520,000 patents, according to a Linux Foundation report. Governments like the system’s flexibility and decentralized nature.
Technology companies, even giants like Intel and AMD that typically don’t publish schematics for their other products, encourage staff to contribute to and implement code from Linux. Google has carried this philosophy into many parts of its business, though not the ones that make the most money. The company did not respond to a request to make an executive available.
Torvalds initially conceived of Linux as a free alternative to Windows. But the collaborative-development, peace-loving ideologies of Linux were no match for the freewheeling, business-savvy, marketing power of Microsoft.
Linux, as a PC platform in the home, showed promise during the boom a decade ago. But it never came to fruition there, even as Apple’s Mac has emerged as a more serious player.
Instead, Linux became the bastion of geek morality, the king of the fast-growing server industry where Microsoft and Apple also compete with limited success, and the choice platform for supercomputers in laboratories.
In Microsoft’s annual report filed last week to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the software giant revised its statement on competition to declare the war with Linux over. Microsoft no longer perceives Linux as credible competition to Windows, the change suggests, as ZDNet notes.
A ‘sticky’ environment
However, Torvalds isn’t ready to forfeit the PC.
"I’m definitely not indifferent to the desktop market," Torvalds wrote in an e-mail. "The desktop is a very ‘sticky’ environment: Users really get attached to their environment."
Several Linux players are still tackling that market, but their efforts amount to only about 1% of desktop usage worldwide. Microsoft controls the lion’s share. Microsoft has been very adept at ensuring that Windows comes as the default operating system installed on most new computers.
"Usage isn’t what matters; mindshare is what matters," said Jono Bacon, a community manager for Ubuntu, the most popular general-purpose version of Linux. "The biggest challenge we face right now is getting preinstalled on hardware."
SUSE, which makes another Linux desktop platform, and others have been choked by Microsoft’s "strong monopoly on the desktop," said Alan Clark, the chariman of the board for the openSUSE Project.
"It’s played out differently than I expected, to be honest," Clark said. "We made some progress, but nothing like anybody envisioned."
Yet, SUSE has a comfortable presence in the server market, Clark said.
"Linux is very much pervasive. It’s everywhere. You can’t even fly on an airplane; ... you can’t use Facebook; you can’t buy a book from Amazon," Clark said, "without running into Linux."
The cult of Linux
Familiarity with Linux became a crucial skill for budding software engineers and server caretakers as far back as the mid-1990s.
When David Bohnett sought a partner in his new Web venture called GeoCities, resulting in one of the largest Internet business deals ever when it went public and then was acquired by Yahoo for $3.6 billion in 1999, his main criteria was an adeptness with Linux programming, Bohnett said in an interview. John Rezner fit the description and shared in the pair’s eventual fortune.
Torvalds, the brain behind Linux, never seemed very interested in fortunes, according to people who know him. The reclusive programming wizard declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed by phone, though he talked openly through e-mail and appeared on stage last week at LinuxCon in Vancouver, Canada.
There, Torvalds was treated like a celebrity. A lover of reclusive scientists, including Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, he described the general reactions from Linux fans as "just odd." He wrote: "Sometimes it does get to be a bit overwhelming."
Clark, from SUSE, described a memorable meeting with Torvalds.
"The first time he came to Japan, seriously, it was like a rock star arrived, and I could kind of tell it was really overwhelming for him," Clark said. "He took it in stride."
The Linux faithful are predominantly male, often nerdy, with strong principles about collaborative development that translate to a belief in a less hierarchal, more cooperative society, according to interviews. For example, Ubuntu’s Bacon has an Android phone, which uses Google’s open-source software, because "the ethical side of me feels like it’s the right thing to do," he said. "It’s not just a product. It’s an ethos."
Apple has tried to define its principles in advertising: artistic, noncorporate and able to "think different." Its brand has been adopted by millions of people.
Meanwhile, Linux has maintained a devout but small following over the last two decades. The Linux software is embedded in many millions of machines, but its ethos and the penguin logo that embodies it remain an underground movement.
To let Turk explain it, because he’d be more than happy to, his tattoo is like a secret handshake, waiting for someone to be able to recognize and reciprocate.
"Every so often, at the gym or something, I’ll run into someone who’s like, ‘That’s the Linux tattoo,’ and there’s a conversation," said Turk, who now works for open-source software maker Talend. "It’s always been something that the community feels like it owns. It’s almost a little bit anti-establishment. The penguin doesn’t stand a chance against the marketing of big firms. But that’s great. It’s good. It’s ours."
Originally Published On: www.cnn.com – Original Article Here
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