Business & Technology » Doug Welch

The YouTube battle for Number 10

Doug Welch — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:52:51 +0000

The YouTube battle for Number 10
Apr. 28 – Britain is renowned for its innovative advertising campaigns, but attempts by UK political parties to replicate digital strategies which were so successful during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign have largely failed to ignite enthusiasm. (02:43)

No related posts.

Robot child gets upgraded

Doug Welch — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:17:53 +0000

Robot child gets upgraded
Apr 27 – A robot designed to learn like a child is getting some new legs and smaller hands. The iCub was originally designed to resemble an infant but had hands of an 8-year-old child because of difficulties making them any smaller. Stuart McDill reports. (01:41)

No related posts.

Microsoft and HTC

Doug Welch — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:10:51 +0000

Microsoft and HTC signed a patent deal for mobile phones.

EDMOND, Wash. — April 27, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. and HTC Corp. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for HTC’s mobile phones running the Android mobile platform. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties from HTC.

The agreement expands HTC’s long-standing business relationship with Microsoft.

“HTC and Microsoft have a long history of technical and commercial collaboration, and today’s agreement is an example of how industry leaders can reach commercial arrangements that address intellectual property,” said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. “We are pleased to continue our collaboration with HTC.”

Microsoft’s Commitment to Licensing Intellectual Property

The licensing agreement is another example of the important role intellectual property (IP) plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant IT ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has entered into more than 600 licensing agreements and continues to develop programs that make it possible for customers, partners and competitors to access its IP portfolio. The program was developed to open access to Microsoft’s significant research and development investments and its growing, broad patent and IP portfolio. More information about Microsoft’s licensing programs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/iplicensing.

—-Microsoft

(via Mashable)

No related posts.

Firefox for Android

Doug Welch — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:31:30 +0000

A lot of people use Firefox as their main browser for the internet. Now it is coming to the Android. It is in a pre-alpha version so there will be some bugs, but it will be nice to have it for the Android. I downloaded it and will check it out
It is actually called Fennec

We’ve only really tested this on the Motorola Droid and the Nexus One.
It will likely not eat your phone, but bugs might cause your phone to stop responding, requiring a reboot.
Memory usage of this build isn’t great — in many ways it’s a debug build, and we haven’t really done a lot of optimization yet. This could cause some problems with large pages, especially on low memory devices like the Droid.
You’ll see the app exit and relaunch on first start, as well as on add-on installs; this is a quirk of our install process, and we’re working to get rid of it.
You can’t open links from other apps using Fennec; we should have this for the next build.
This build requires Android 2.0 or above, and likely an OpenGL ES 2.0 capable device.
Edit: This build must be installed to internal memory, not to a SD card.
There also aren’t yet any automated nightly developer builds or automated updates to this build; it’s even more of a pre-nightly build (even earlier than pre-alpha). But, it’s usable enough that we wanted to get some feedback on it as we continue to develop. —Vladimir Vukićević

No related posts.

Apple results blow past Wall Street targets

Doug Welch — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:16:41 +0000

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs speaks about an application for the iPad at a special event at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California April 8, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc posted quarterly results that blasted past Wall Street’s expectations, led by strong sales of the iPhone.
The company on Tuesday reported net income of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 a share, in the fiscal second quarter ended March 27, up from $1.62 billion, or $1.79 a share, in the year-ago period.

Analysts were expecting a profit of $2.45 a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Revenue rose nearly 50 percent to $13.5 billion, well above Wall Street’s estimate of $12.04 billion.
For the current quarter, Apple forecast earnings $2.28 to $2.39 a share on revenue of $13 billion to $13.4 billion.
Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple touched an all-time high of $251.14 on Friday, buoyed by pre-earnings optimism and hopes that the much-touted iPad tablet computer would carve out a new market for consumer electronics.
On Tuesday, the stock closed at $244.59 on Nasdaq and was halted in after-hours trading.
(Reporting by Gabriel Madway; Editing by Richard Chang)

No related posts.

Yahoo profit outpaces Wall Street estimates

Doug Welch — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:13:26 +0000

A Yahoo! billboard is seen in New York's Time's Square January 25, 2010. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Yahoo Inc exceeded Wall Street’s earnings expectations in the first quarter thanks to the sale of some of its assets and its search deal with Microsoft, but the company’s revenue fell a hair short of Wall Street expectations.
Shares of Yahoo were down about 1 percent after closing the regular Nasdaq session nearly flat at $18.38.

Yahoo posted net income of $312.3 million, or 22 cents a share, in the three months ending March 31, compared with $118.7 million, or 8 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.
Yahoo said the results included a 5 cent benefit from its sale of the Zimbra business and a 2 cent benefit from the deal to partner with Microsoft on search.
Excluding those items, Yahoo posted a profit of 15 cents per share compared to the average analyst estimate of 9 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Yahoo said revenue in the first quarter totaled $1.6 billion compared with $1.58 billion in the first quarter of 2009.
Net revenue, which excludes the money Yahoo pays to partner websites, totaled $1.13 billion, compared with $1.16 billion a year earlier, and below the average analyst estimate of $1.17 billion.
Yahoo forecast revenue in the second quarter of $1.6 billion to $1.68 billion, though it was not immediately clear how that compares with the net revenue figures estimated by analysts.
Yahoo shares, which have risen more than 10 percent since the start of the month, fell 23 cents to $18.15 in after-hours trade on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Gary Hill)

No related posts.

Apple seeks return of lost iPhone prototype

Doug Welch — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:10:54 +0000

Customers line up to purchase the Apple iPhone 3GS at the 5th Avenue Apple store in New York June 19, 2009. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A wayward prototype of Apple Inc’s next-generation iPhone has dominated the chatter in Silicon Valley over the past few days, and the company has moved to recover the device after it was apparently lost in a bar.
The unreleased iPhone unit later resurfaced on Gizmodo, a popular gadget website, which promptly splashed photos and details of it all over the Web and touched off a storm of publicity and speculation in the technology blogosphere.

The device featured some noticeable improvements on the current generation model, including a front-facing camera for video chat and an improved version of its standard camera, among other goodies.
Apple has released a new iPhone for each of the past three summers. Although the company has not formally announced its plans for this year, it is widely expected to launch the fourth-generation model this summer.
There was plenty of online discussion on Monday about whether the device was the genuine article. But a consensus emerged among the bloggers who track Apple’s every tic that it was, in fact, a next-generation iPhone prototype.
Then Apple, famously secretive and protective of its trade secrets, moved to get the device back.
Gizmodo late Monday posted a letter from Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell to Gizmodo editorial director Brian Lam. The letter said: “It has come to our attention that Gizmodo is currently in possession of a device that belongs to Apple.”
The company asked that the iPhone be returned, and Gizmodo said it would do so.
Apple did not return a call seeking a comment.
According to Gizmodo, the iPhone was left in a bar in Redwood City, California, on March 18 by a young software engineer. The device was found on a stool by an unidentified person, the blog said.
Nick Denton, head of blog network Gawker Media, which owns Gizmodo, said in published reports that the site paid $5,000 for the iPhone prototype.
(Reporting by Gabriel Madway, editing by Matthew Lewis)

No related posts.

Undersea telecoms cables face growing risks: report

Doug Welch — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:06:27 +0000

By William Maclean, Security Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) – Investors should urgently diversify the web of undersea cables that serve as the world’s information and banking arteries to address soaring demand and piracy concerns and reduce the risk of catastrophic outages.
So says a report by a multinational research project that calls for the building of global backup routes for the submarine network that carries almost all international communications, including financial transactions and Internet traffic.
The report’s main author, Karl Rauscher of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an international professional body, told Reuters changes should be made “before we have to learn the hard way.”

“This report is trying to have a September 10 mindset, where you actually do something about what you know on September 10 to avoid a September 11 situation,” Rauscher, who was an adviser to the U.S. government on cyber security after the September 11 attacks, said.
An executive summary of the report made available to Reuters says that the current probability of a global or regional failure of the network is very low, but is “not zero.”
“The impact of such a failure on international security and economic stability could be devastating…There is no sufficient alternative back-up in the case of catastrophic loss of regional or global connectivity.”
WITHOUT CABLES, MARKETS WOULD “FREEZE”
“Satellites cannot handle the volume of traffic — the available capacity is not even close,” the report says.
“It is unclear if civilization can recover from the failure of a technology that has been so rapidly adopted without a backup plan … Without (the network), the world’s economic financial market would immediately freeze.”
The project, managed by the IEEE and the EastWest Institute think tank, cites the “cable-dense” Luzon Strait south of Taiwan, the Strait of Malacca and the Red Sea among several “chokepoints” that funnel important cable paths together.
“A single disaster in such an area could cause catastrophic loss of regional and global connectivity,” the report says.
“Insatiable thirst for bandwidth is accompanied by an ever-growing dependence on inter-continental communications, which are nearly entirely supported by undersea cables.”
The study said it taken account of numerous trends including skyrocketing bandwidth demand, increased piracy on the high seas and “growing concerns of terrorist activity worldwide.”
“Increased hostile activity around the world requires the undersea communications cable industry to enhance its preparedness for attacks on its specialized cable ships and critical infrastructure,” it said.
Recent failures include breaks in three submarine cables linking Europe and the Middle East, which disrupted Internet and international telephone services in parts of the Middle East and South Asia in December 2008.
DEPENDENCE HAS GROWN
In January 2008, a breakdown in an undersea cable network disrupted Internet links to Egypt, India and Gulf Arab countries and a December 2006 earthquake off southern Taiwan hit cables and slowed Internet and telephone traffic across parts of Asia.
The study’s concern is not so much that the reliability of the system is declining, but that the world’s dependence has grown so great — and on a network lacking global backup.
“What would you do without connectivity for a day, a week, or a month?” said Rauscher, also executive director of Bell Labs Network Reliability and Security Office of Alcatel-Lucent.
Rauscher presented the report, entitled the Reliability of Global Undersea Communications Cable Infrastructure, to 40 ambassadors in Washington on Monday and it will be studied again at an EastWest cyber security conference in Dallas in May.
In a foreword to the report, U.S. Federal Reserve chief of staff Steve Malphrus said the financial sector’s stability was increasingly linked to its understanding of operational risk. He wrote: “When communications networks go down, the financial services sector does not grind to a halt. It snaps to a halt.”
(Editing by Lin Noueihed)

No related posts.

New EU rules let brand owners block online sales

Doug Welch — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:03:21 +0000

By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission unveiled revised antitrust rules on Tuesday allowing luxury brand owners to block online retailers without a bricks-and-mortar shop from distributing their products.
In a bid to counter criticism from online retailers such as eBay and Amazon as well as consumer groups that the provision could restrict user choice, the European Union competition watchdog said it would monitor developments.
“The Commission will be particularly attentive to concentrated markets to which price-discounters either online only or traditional may not have access,” the European Union executive said in statement.

Brand owners — often in the high-end or luxury goods market — had argued for the requirement to deter so-called free-riders, competitors who may benefit from their marketing that luxury brands carry out without bearing the same costs.
Industry body European Alliance, which represents three-quarters of global luxury brands, said the regulation showed the Commission recognized the importance of the luxury goods industry, which employs 800,000 people, directly and indirectly, in Europe.
“This new regulatory framework will allow us to continue the significant investment our sector makes for our online presence well as in our physical outlets,” Guy Salter, a spokesman for the organization said.
EBay said the updated rules did away with many unfair restrictions currently facing online companies and that it would work with EU governments to “expose any attempts to unfairly limit online sales.”
Luxury stocks were up on Tuesday but analysts said the upward move was more driven by the general market and Burberry’s
upbeat forecast and Coach’s strong first-quarter earnings.
By 1423 GMT, shares in LVMH and Hermes were up more than 1 percent, while shares in PPR which owns Gucci Group, were up 1.38 percent.
The new, 10-year “vertical restraints block exemption regulation” will go into force in June, with a one-year transitional period, the EU regulator said.
It replaces existing guidelines exempting distribution agreements between manufacturers and distributors from strict EU competition rules if they comply with certain criteria.
The Commission said approved distributors were free to sell on the Internet without limitations on quantities, customers’ location and restrictions on prices, provided both manufacturer and distributor were not overly dominant in the market.
“The rules adopted today will ensure that consumers can buy goods and services at the best available prices wherever they are located in the EU while leaving companies without market power essentially free to organize their sales network as they see best,” said Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia.
(Additional reporting by Luke Baker and Astrid Wendlandt in Paris; Editing by Rupert Winchester)

No related posts.

Apple says iPad 3G available on April 30

Doug Welch — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:00:00 +0000

A customer works with an Apple iPad during an iPad launch event at the Apple retail store in San Francisco, California April 3, 2010. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The high-speed mobile version of Apple Inc’s iPad will hit store shelves on April 30, and international pricing for the tablet computer will be spelled out on May 10, the company said on Tuesday.
The popular touchscreen device has sold more than 500,000 units of its Wi-Fi model in the U.S. in the week after its April 3 launch. Demand is expected to remain high with the launch of the version that connects to AT&T’s third generation — or 3G — wireless network.

The 3G model, which also operates via Wi-Fi, will cost an additional $130, meaning that the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models will cost $629, $729 and $829, respectively.
Apple said the iPad — a flat device with a color touchscreen whose uses include surfing the Web, watching movies, playing games and sending email — will be available at the end of May in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.
(Reporting by Franklin Paul; Editing by Derek Caney)

No related posts.