Posted on 1317 May 2012 by FernanV in Technology
Microsoft is revamping its Bing search engine to include advice from Facebook and other social media platforms.
The move involves the introduction of a new sidebar which seeks to connect users with friends and other enthusiasts who can provide help.
The firm says it is based on the fact "90% of people consult with a friend or expert before making a decision".
Surveys suggest Bing has about a 15% share of the US search market, lagging behind Google's 66% portion.
The new service appears on the right-hand side of all results and includes a feature dubbed Friends Who Might Know.
"Bing suggests friends on Facebook who might know about the topic – based on what they 'like', their Facebook profile information, or photos they have shared so you can easily ask them about relevant experiences and opinions," said Microsoft on its blog.
"For example, if you're searching for diving spots in Costa Rica… you may discover that one of your friends knows a great spot, based on photos from their last trip."
Beyond Facebook the firm said it would also flag up other experts identified from their posts on Google's social network Google+ as well as Twitter, Foursquare, Quora and Linkedin.
Microsoft said that the service would roll out "in the coming days" in the US, but did not mention other locations.
"Using social signals for search results is obviously the Holy Grail as people tend to trust each other more and can help with the whole discovery process," Sameet Sinha, an internet analyst at the investment bank B Riley & Co told the BBC.
"This wlll help Microsoft compete against Google and may encourage people to try switching to Bing."
The move builds on a partnership between Microsoft and Facebook created when the Windows-maker paid $240m for a 1.6% stake in the social network in 2007.
When Facebook goes public soon, that stake will be worth more than $1bn.
However, Microsoft runs the risk that if the latest tie-up proves successful it could encourage Facebook to launch its own search service.
"Facebook could capture around 22% of the global search market by simply launching its own search engine tomorrow," suggested the London-based digital marketing agency Greenlight which has carried out a study into the matter.
"It wouldn't need to be a spectacular engine either, just well integrated into the Facebook experience."
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 956 May 2012 by FernanV in Technology
Timothy Lu is an accidental businessman.
Having studied medicine, he initially set out to do scientific research.
But along the way he realised his ideas could better help people if he went beyond academia and entered the world of commerce.
Now Mr Lu splits his time between his job as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a revitalised factory building on the edge of Boston.
There he is a director and scientific founder of a company called Sample6 Technologies.
The company has used cutting-edge techniques to engineer viruses that attack bacteria, known as phages, which it uses to rapidly detect dangerous bacterial contamination in farms and food plants.
Mr Lu has been unusually successful, having raised some $5.5m (£3.4m) so far.
Yet the basic outline of his story is a familiar one at universities across the United States, where many small start-up firms have grown into large companies.
"In the US, it has become the norm and almost the requirement" for academic research to spawn businesses, according to Noubar Afeyan, a senior lecturer of entrepreneurship and innovation at MIT's Sloan School of Management, and managing partner of an early-stage venture capital firm, Flagship Ventures.
For the students, such companies offer opportunities to learn. For entrepreneurs with specialist knowledge, they offer commercial opportunities. For the faculties and the universities, they offer a financial boon.
MIT, which is among the top royalty earners in the country, made about $69m last year on a budget of more than $2bn.
But the spirit of entrepreneurship generates value well beyond the university.
If the firms founded by MIT graduates formed an independent nation, that country would be at least the 17th largest economy in the world, according to a study by the entrepreneur-promoting Kauffman Foundation.
The era of American academic entrepreneurship was given a fillip by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allowed universities to patent advances made on their campuses even though the basic research was often funded by US taxpayers.
This meant universities could keep the money they earned from commercialisation, though it also put pressure on them to start producing useful ideas.
"When I first came to MIT 30 years ago, [starting a business] was not at all a popular path," Mr Afeyan says, pointing to how there is tens or hundreds or even thousands more academic entrepreneurs now.
In a 2010 study from Indiana University, Professor David B Audretsch and colleagues found that roughly a quarter of the country's most prominent scientists had started companies.
Since the late 1990s, the area around Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts has emerged as a hub of biomedical entrepreneurship.
The cross-pollination between MIT and Harvard University's academics, entrepreneurs and big business created a fertile culture, Mr Afeyan says.
It sometimes takes a village to spawn a company
Zen Chu, a biomedical engineer and serial entrepreneur, says he was drawn to MIT and Cambridge because it was such a vortex of entrepreneurial success.
Nearly a decade ago, he connected with several MIT professors and launched a company, 3DM, to produce biomaterials that accelerate tissue regeneration and wound healing, replacing animal and human-derived materials with synthetic ones.
The company funded its first clinical trial in Japan and then went public there in 2011.
The essential ingredients for the company's success, Chu says, was the engineering culture of MIT, Boston's medical community, the "ecosystem" of entrepreneurs like himself and the close proximity of all types of venture capital willing to take risks at different stages of the company's development.
"Those are the key elements," he says. "Boston has those elements."
Traditionally, most of the Boston area's commercial ideas have come from MIT and, to a lesser extent, from Harvard.
Now, Boston University, a few kilometres away across the Charles River, is trying to commercialise its own innovations and compete with its better-known rivals.
Vinit Nijhawan, managing director of the Office of Technology Development at Boston University, has spent the last two years reversing its "spectacularly unsuccessful" commercialisation track record.
Mr Nijhawan, a venture capitalist himself, quickly realised that if he wanted to compete, his office would have to play an activist role in building businesses from academic insights.
"We're behaving like a seed-stage venture firm," he says.
The Office of Technology Development is offering gap funding to companies that are not yet ready to attract traditional venture capital, as well as a mentoring program for academics and managers.
So far, it has helped support five early stage companies, including Mr Lu's Sample6, and it is ready to help launch a dozen more.
"The scarce resource is not ideas and it's not money," Mr Nijhawan says.
"The scarce resource is that entrepreneurial champion who's going to take an idea and find a way to move it forward."
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 3007 April 2012 by FernanV in Technology
NEW DELHI/HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia phones once took pride of place in Manish Khatri’s Mumbai store, but now models made by Samsung Electronics get the limelight.
He has nothing against Nokia, he says, but it’s better for business to push the more popular models.
That simple calculation is being made in thousands of stores across India and similar emerging markets, where Nokia’s rivals used to be relative minnows.
For 14 years the world’s biggest seller of mobile phones, it was overtaken by Korea’s Samsung in the first quarter of this year, having already watched both Apple and Samsung leapfrog its lead in the lucrative smartphone segment last year.
In the popular narrative of Nokia’s eclipse, it is Apple’s iPhone that steals the light, but the company is also losing its shine in the basic phone market, which had been a reliable generator of profits and carried the promise of years of strong growth in emerging markets.
No more.
Its basic phone sales fell 16 percent in the first three months of 2012, and have fallen in four of the last five quarters, while competitors like China’s ZTE and Huawei have been growing fast.
In India, the world’s second-biggest mobile phone market, with more than 900 million subscribers, Nokia’s market share has halved in the three years to 2011, when it sold 31 percent of the total 183 million handsets sold, according to Indian researcher CyberMedia.
Analysts say it has failed to keep up with the changing tastes of the growing middle class, and, in a country where the thin-margin network operators don’t tend to subsidize phones, is losing storeowners like Khatri, who influence buyers’ choices.
“For dealers like us, we face a lot of problems from Nokia for getting even the basic (demonstration phone) dummies to show to the customer,” he said. “There is no push from the company.”
He said his store, which sells around 500 phones a month, is probably not a priority for Nokia, but Samsung has been sending staff to visit.
LOCAL FAVOURITES
In China, the world’s largest cellphone market, operators have started to play a bigger role in selling phones, and that trend is working against Nokia.
“They prioritize domestic vendors over international companies,” said analyst Pete Cunningham from Canalys.
In January-March its sales there shrank 62 percent from a year ago. Its share of the market had dwindled to 24 percent last year from 39 percent two years earlier, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
In Africa, too, its market share slipped to 51 percent last year from 62 percent two years before. It’s still ahead of rivals because of its superior distribution on the continent, says Neil Mawston at Strategy Analytics, but it has to act to arrest the decline.
“Nokia is drying up like a puddle in the sun and urgently needs new products to refill the puddle,” he said.
In the meantime, it is racking up losses, its shares have lost more than three quarters of their value in a year, and this week two agencies cut its credit rating to junk status.
Nokia says it is continuing to invest to attract customers in these markets.
“Our mobile phones portfolio continues to be strong, especially in key markets like India, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico where the Asha products are receiving record high scores from consumers,” said Mary McDowell, EVP Mobile Phones.
She said the company would be announcing data plans for the new Asha 202 basic phone model with five operators in India on Monday.
MISSING TOUCH
Analysts also say Nokia can be slow to react on popular technology.
In emerging markets, for example, multi-SIM models have been a draw for people who want to take advantage of freebies doled out by competing carriers, but Nokia lacked such phones until mid-2011.
Another costly gap in its basic phones offering is a full touch-screen model. Around 105 million such phones were sold last year globally, according to Strategy Analytics.
“Nokia left the door wide open for Samsung and others by not delivering a full-touch feature phone. The Koreans figured it out three years ago, yet Nokia still does not have a product,” said Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.
“In the meantime, prices of Android smartphones have dropped, and Nokia’s window of opportunity is almost closed.”
Nokia is due to unveil a full-touch 306 feature phone model in the coming months.
SLIPPED HALO
“Nokia’s main challenge this year is to arrest the sharp decline in its flagship smartphone portfolio and use it to rebuild a positive halo-effect for the overall Nokia brand,” said Mawston.
The company abandoned its own Symbian smartphone operating system last year in favor of the largely untried Windows Phone alternative after Stephen Elop joined as chief executive from Windows maker Microsoft. Symbian sales have nosedived before the Windows models got off the ground.
This month it started sales of the first Windows smartphones in China with an aggressive marketing campaign and huge ads at subway stations, in magazines and newspapers.
There are some positive noises coming from customers.
“I just bought a new Nokia Windows phone and wasn’t very used to its tile design, but the experience was quite good after half an hour. All the basic functions I need are there, and I’m beginning to think that Windows phones will make it,” Wang Xiao said on his Sina microblog.
“Having an operating system which is Windows-based doesn’t excite me,” said 22-year old student Akshay Johar in New Delhi, looking at one of Nokia’s new Lumia models, but added: “The phone has great features, it looks good, the touch screen is very responsive.”
He is considering buying one, he said.
About 27 million people need to make that decision this year, 55 million next year, and 94 million in 2014, according to analysts polled by Reuters.
That only 2 million did in the first quarter shows how steep is the mountain that Nokia must climb.
(Additional reporting by Lee Chyen Yee in Hong Kong; Editing by Will Waterman)
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 2933 April 2012 by FernanV in Technology
![[ROBOTVAC]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OD-AQ710_ROBOTV_OZ_20120420022531.jpg)
Harry Campbell for The Wall Street Journal
I HAVE TWO ROBOTS that clean the floors in my apartment: the Evolution Robotics Mint and the iRobot Roomba 530. The Mint sweeps and mops. The Roomba vacuums. Total retail cost for my live-in cleaning staff: $500.
The point of deploying these devices is to save time. In practice, though, I don’t end up with as much free time as you would think, mainly because I find it impossible not to watch the robots work. It’s like hiring someone to mow your lawn, then sitting down and watching him mow your lawn. True, the novelty wears off after a few months, but I still find myself curious. Will the robot pick up that huge dust bunny that would take me five seconds to pick up and throw away? Let me wait 10 minutes and find out.
As domestic help, robots have flaws. I bought my Roomba about three years ago; the Mint joined it a year later. But my dream of an immaculate, machine-cleaned home has yet to materialize—they can be slow and you have to space out your furniture to give them room to maneuver. But they earn their keep in other ways: They’re entertaining—a cross between the Three Stooges and a geeky Discovery Channel reality show. I’ve read that owners often grow attached to their machines. Some give their vacuums names; there’s even a website that sells clothing for Roombas.
My bots and I don’t have that type of relationship. And yet when a friend asks if I’ve ever deployed both at the same time just to see what would happen, I bristle. That would be immoral—like running a cockfighting ring. Besides, it’d be boring. When they bump into something, they just turn around and head the other way.
The Mint is the newer kid on the block. It was released about two years ago; a more powerful model geared for larger spaces—the MintPlus ($300)—was released last fall. The creative team behind Mint includes designer Yves Behar and usability guru Don Norman, who coined the term “user experience” in the early ’90s when he worked at Apple. They’re a sort of dream team as far as consumer products go. The Mint is small, quiet, and inconspicuous—a sleek white box that looks like a character from “WALL-E.” It cleans only hard-surface floors (no carpets). I deploy it compulsively—sometimes more than once a day—because it’s so easy to maintain: Just swap out the reusable microfiber or disposable Swiffer cloth that is clamped to the bottom. The Mint has shown me how perpetually dirty my floors are.
The Roomba, first released in 2002, is the pioneer of cleaning robots. The latest model, the Roomba 780 ($600) is the sixth generation in the line (it does everything mine can, but more effectively and efficiently). Roombas have military roots. To figure out how to cover a room most thoroughly, it uses software derived from a minesweeping robot commissioned by the Navy’s Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division.
But the way it bounces around the room is hard to make sense of. Why do I feel deflated when it misses a scrap of paper just out of its path, even though I know it’ll make good on a subsequent pass?
I’m told there’s a method to its madness. All those bonks let it estimate the size of the room so it can adjust its running time accordingly. It can even tell when it’s hit a particularly dirty spot: A microphone listens for that clickety sound that’s so satisfying to hear when you vacuum.
Still, despite all the brain power behind the Roomba and the Mint, watching them work you can’t help feeling that you’ve just unleashed the dumbest things in the world in your living room. Cute, but stupid.
Granted, “stupid” is the state of robotics. We’re a long way off from C-3PO with a feather duster. According to Evolution Robotics’ chief executive, Paolo Pirjanian, who oversaw the development of Mint’s software algorithms, tasks that come easiest to humans tend to be the most difficult for robots. Take traveling from point A to point B, so a robot can deliver a glass from the kitchen to the dining table: Once it sets out, the robot can try to figure out its position by counting the number of times its wheels have rotated. But if the wheels slip, the robot gets hopelessly lost. Mint’s solution is a cube that projects infrared spots onto the ceiling, which the robot uses to pinpoint its location.
And these robots work more slowly than you or I would. A human wielding a broom and dustpan can be shockingly efficient. I’ve clocked it: In my modestly sized rooms, the time it takes to prepare, deploy and clean the robots isn’t much less than what it takes to vacuum or sweep.
Despite this, the Roomba and Mint grow on you—as they were designed to. With the Mint, Mr. Norman suggested giving the device cues (chipper sounds, flashing lights) to make it seem like a pet that loves doing chores. Both devices play a short tune when they set out to work. The Mint’s is an ascending minor scale—a choice I don’t understand, as it sounds slightly ominous. The Roomba’s tune is heroic, John Phillips Sousa, a battle charge, which seems appropriate.
Efficiency, I’ve come to realize, is beside the point. There’s a joy from watching something undertake a task that’s challenging for it but easy for you. It’s the opposite of watching pro sports. The best analogy I can think of is watching your toddler struggle to crawl up stairs or climb onto the couch. You root for your kid. You take pride in her simple accomplishments. Her foibles are endearing.
And that’s why when your robot finally finds its way to a dust bunny and swallows it whole, you stand up and cheer.
A version of this article appeared April 21, 2012, on page D12 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Robo-Help.
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 3132 March 2012 by FernanV in Technology
Editor’s note: Christopher Wolf is an Internet and privacy lawyer and is chairman of the Internet Hate Task Forces of the Anti-Defamation League and the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism.
When Rutgers student Dharun Ravi set up a spycam to catch roommate Tyler Clementi in a same-sex romantic moment, and when he tweeted about it and his plans to do it again, little did he think that Clementi would commit suicide or that he would face serious jail time and deportation. Ravi is learning his lesson the hard way.
There are lessons for all of us:
What you do online can hurt people. Despite the adage about sticks and stones, words can and do hurt — especially when anyone can publish information that reaches millions. The Internet is full of homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic content.
At a minimum, hate speech is online pollution, but it can go much further. It reinforces stereotypes and strengthens the belief that singling out “the other” for abuse is acceptable. Hate speech can harden low self-esteem and intimidate its targets — and even lead people to commit suicide.
Online bystanders have a responsibility. Some students in the Rutgers dorm were amused by Ravi’s spycam-Twitter scheme. Others ignored it. They should have been outraged, and they should have done something about it. “If you see something, say something” is not an admonition restricted to the security realm.
Tools are online for each of us to flag and report content that is objectionable. Many online companies have staffs to review such reports and to take action, from removing the offensive content to ejecting the person who posted it. Each of us should take responsibility to combat hate-filled content.
Speak up: Clicking to report hate speech to an online host is not all we can do. Justice Louis Brandeis, in a 1927 Supreme Court case, extolled the virtues of “counter-speech” to address objectionable speech.
That pre-Internet admonition applies full force to online messages today. Hate speech legitimizes discrimination, and many of the people who post it believe no one objects. So object. Speak up to counter the lies of hate speech or the inappropriate online conduct directed at minorities. Just as the Internet provides thoughtless haters with broadcasting tools, each of us has those same tools at our disposal. A little counter-speech can go a long way.
It’s time to get serious about cyber-literacy and ethics. The lack of education in schools about the rules that apply to online posting is appalling. Kids are left to their own devices, literally, with little guidance.
Given the power in everyone’s hands to cause injury — and to be injured — schools should provide serious discussions of what is appropriate online behavior. We are well past the time when adults can think of themselves as the digital immigrants who don’t fully understand new technologies, compared with their kids, the digital natives who better understand the online world.
Privacy is a shared responsibility. Discussions about privacy usually revolve around consumer privacy and protection. But in this era of social media, when everyone can be a publisher and broadcaster, individual responsibility to respect privacy should be the focus. Most people would know that secretly setting up a webcam to spy on someone is wrong. But posting embarrassing photos and videos and making thoughtless comments can be a wrongful invasion of privacy as well. Each of us has a responsibility to consider the privacy implications of what we do online.
Homophobia is not funny. Finally, while young straight people today are much more accepting of gay people, an undercurrent of homophobia remains. Ravi most likely would not have set up a webcam to catch his roommate making out with a girl, nor would he have tweeted about it.
In some quarters, the put-down “That’s so gay” is still common parlance. Many think of gays and lesbians as “the other” and fair game for jokes. Racist and anti-Semitic jokes still have currency. Ravi may have thought what he was doing to his roommate was funny, but he now knows it was anything but, for Clementi and for himself.
Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion
Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Christopher Wolf.
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 3021 March 2012 by FernanV in Technology
A decade and a half later, the very idea is laughable, says Gawker Media founder Nick Denton.
“It didn’t happen,” said Denton, whose properties include the blogs Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker. “It’s a promise that has so not happened that people don’t even have that ambition anymore.
“The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership — that’s a joke.”
Denton was speaking at South by Southwest Interactive, the annual festival here devoted to Web and digital culture.
He said that commenting on his own sites (which he’s seen make reporters cry) has gotten so bad that he doesn’t engage.
“I don’t like going into the comments. … For every two comments that are interesting — even if they’re critical, you want to engage with them — there will be eight that are off-topic or just toxic,” he said.
And as sites get more popular, it’s harder to control the comments, which inevitably get nastier.
“What you can manage on a small site … the level of discussion you can have on those is not the level you’re able to have on a newspaper site or one of our sites. Our smaller blogs have 2 million unique (visitors per month). … It’s hard to have that intimacy.”
So, what’s the solution?
When it comes to improving open discussion threads, Denton, during an interview-style discussion with blogger and Expert Labs director Anil Dash, seemed quicker to shoot down ideas that others are trying than to provide proposals of his own.
Having editors and reporters engage their readers in the comments? “The writer of the piece has to move on to the next piece. They don’t have time to moderate all those comments.”
Require readers to post using their real names? “My own view is that anonymity is at the heart of the Internet.”
Give other commenters more power to “up-vote” or “down-vote” posts? “We don’t really believe in the democratic process of decision-making when it comes to discussion,” Denton said.
For example, he said, Jezebel has made lots of hay off of sexual harassment accusations against American Apparel Chief Executive Officer Dov Charney. Denton said he’d love to see Charney come into the comments section to defend himself.
“If you put it to a vote, 90% would vote to ban him. They hate that guy,” Denton said. “If Dov Charney went into the Jezebel comments, he’d be torn limb from limb; his limbs aren’t all that would be torn off.”
The answer? Denton said his sites are planning to post some stories that allow only a hand-picked, pre-approved group of people to comment on them. That, he said, would make the comment section an extension of the story and allow people, like Charney in the above example, to have their say without fear of being piled onto by others.
“I think it’s part of the answer,” he said. “What I want is, I want the sources — I want the experts to be able to comment in these discussions.”
When he took questions, Denton had to do a little answering about the responsibility the tone of a site itself has in guiding its comments section.
Many of Gawker’s sites aren’t known for being particularly delicate (One of today’s top Gawker headlines: “Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Son Injures Ass Skiing, Tweets Photo”).
“It’s certainly true that nice sites run by nice people … that encourages good behavior,” Denton said. “But it’s not as if it’s entirely the writer setting the tone for the comments. Sometimes, it’s the comments setting the tone for the writer.”
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 2527 March 2012 by FernanV in Technology
Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:44pm EDT
<span class="articleLocatio
n”>(Reuters) – Four directors of KIT Digital Inc, including independent director Santo Politi, stepped down from the video technology company’s board as part of a management rejig, sending the company’s shares tumbling to a more than two-year low.
KIT Digital said the there were repeated requests from shareholders to reduce the number of inside directors.
The company also appointed Chief Administrative Officer Barak Bar-Cohen interim chief executive, replacing Kaleil Isaza Tuzman who will continue as the chariman of the board.
“From the stock perspective, it’s not the CEO stepping down or the company’s hunt for a new CEO or resignation of three members of the board. It is to do with Politi’s departure and, more so, with the timing of it,” JMP Securities analyst Mark Harding said.
He said Politi — one of the top ten shareholders of KIT Digital with a nearly 2 percent stake — quit KIT Digital over differences of opinion with the management over the company’s possible buyout.
However, the company denied that. “There have been no differences of opinion with Politi over the company buyout as we are not up for sale. We respect his opinion,” Tuzman told Reuters.
The company, however, said it had appointed a special committee to evaluate unsolicited interests from a couple of suitors.
Tuzman also said he was looking to have a new CEO in place in the next three to six months.
The company, which has delayed its annual report, could go private or be bought out by a larger company,” said analyst Harding.
KIT Digital’s stock — one of the top losers on the Nasdaq on Friday — closed at $6.33 on Friday on Nasdaq. It fell to $5.99 earlier in the session.
(Reporting by Monika Shinghal in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 2043 March 2012 by FernanV in Technology
<span class="articleLocatio
n”>(Reuters) – Facebook Inc is taking the next step on its IPO journey and has summoned research analysts from Wall Street banks to its Menlo Park headquarters early next week for a pre-roadshow briefing to discuss the finer points of its business and books.
The world’s largest social network, which is racing toward what would be Silicon Valley’s largest ever initial public offering, will not disclose new information during the meeting with analysts.
Instead, it will outline its strategy and answer questions on how to analyze its operations and help analysts build models on its financials, two sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the meeting is not public.
Called a “due diligence meeting”, such pre-roadshow pow-wows are standard fare for future debutantes.
It is not clear how many analysts have been invited. One source said analysts from five to 10 of the largest banks underwriting Facebook’s IPO will likely attend the meeting.
A second source said analysts from most banks helping underwrite the offering have been invited to the meeting, scheduled for Monday. Both sources would not elaborate because of the conditions of the presentation.
Facebook listed 31 banks as underwriters on its IPO in an updated regulatory filing on March 7.
A spokesman for the company declined to comment.
Founded by Mark Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room, Facebook is the world’s No. 1 online social network with more than 845 million users. The company plans to raise $5 billion in an IPO expected to value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion, in Silicon Valley’s largest-ever coming-out party.
Some on Wall Street worry about the company’s over-reliance on advertising for 85 percent of its revenue, which totaled $3.7 billion last year. Others will want to know how Facebook intends to fend off increasing competition from the likes of Google Inc, which is cultivating its own social network called Google+.
Also, corporate governance experts have called attention to the fact that Zuckerberg will retain disproportionate control over the company after it goes public.
The company has said it expects to trade under the ticker FB when it makes its debut as a publicly traded company, expected in mid 2012.
(Editing by Edwin Chan and Ramya Venugopal)
FernanV
Comments Off
Posted on 1047 March 2012 by FernanV in Technology
The Orange mobile network says it has resolved problems that caused the loss of 3G data services to some users.
Subscribers had reported that they had still been able to make calls.
The network's parent company – Everything Everywhere – said it did not believe the issue had affected users on its other network, T-Mobile.
A spokeswoman said the issue stemmed from a "configuration change" made to its systems and apologised to customers who had experienced problems.
"Orange customers who had an existing data session did not lose their connection and were able to continue as normal but a small number experienced issues in making new connections," she said.
Smartphone users in Birmingham, Glasgow, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, London and Bristol were among those to have complained they had been affected.
"I have not had 3G on since midday which has caused problems because sadly I missed two auctions on eBay," Christopher Wheeler from Salford told the BBC.
Others expressed their frustration at the fact they only learned of the problem from the media.
"Nowhere on the Orange website was I able to find any information as to why it had happened or how long it was to last," Michael Gorf, from Kent said. "I understand that these things happen but that's poor customer service."
Simon Pearce, from Chorley, added "Orange should text their customers when there are problems with the service – they text me with their offers all the time. Nevertheless this is a rare failure of a normally quality service so I am not too upset."
FernanV
Comments Off
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)
FernanV
Comments Off
