By Esther Shein
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

After an absence of more than a decade, Japanese consumer electronics maker Panasonic is reportedly jumping back into the video-game market with the development of a handheld game player dubbed "Jungle." A source told Reuters the handheld is being targeted at the U.S. gaming market. According to Bloomberg, it will be "very different" from traditional handheld gaming devices. A new subsidiary, Panasonic Cloud Entertainment, has been set up to oversee the project. The device will go up against players from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, along with several other services offered on smartphones and tablets such as Apple iPhone and iPad.

Registered customers received an email on Monday saying that users were invited to Panasonic's U.S. operations to test the player, said Bloomberg, which also reported that a Panasonic spokesman in Tokyo confirmed the email but didn't provide other details.

The clamshell device will have a touchpad, QWERTY keyboard and other gaming controls and focus on online gaming that can be played anytime, anywhere, according to TechCrunch, which also reported that it may run on Linux. The supposed website for the Jungle device said the mission is to "create an ecosystem around online gaming" and that "leading online gaming developers" are working on new content. A browser-based MMO (massively multiplayer online) game will let players "delve into the mysteries of the Battlestar [Galactica] universe as a human or cylon,'' the site states. The subsidiary will also create video content for the Jungle brand and has partnered with Machinima.com on a new weekly show called Online Underground.

The video-game industry is expected to reach sales of $20 billion this year in the U.S. The last time Panasonic launched a gaming console was in 1993 with its $700 3DO device. A month later, Atari came out with a $249 Jaguar player. The last 3DO model came out in the fall of 1994 and then Panasonic folded the business unit.

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By Antone Gonsalves
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Gartner has lowered its 2010 and 2011 global forecasts for PC shipments, saying sales will be lower than expected due to growing interest in Apple's iPad and other tablet computers. The research firm said Monday that PC makers are on track to ship 352.4 million units this year, up 14.3% from 2009. Gartner had predicted in September a 17.9% increase.

Gartner also lowered its 2011 forecast to 409 million units, a 15.9% increase from this year. The firm's earlier estimate was for an 18.1% increase.

Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal said the lower estimates are based on slower consumer sales. The drop is "due in no small part to growing user interest in media tablets such as the iPad."

"Over the longer term, media tablets are expected to displace around 10% of PC units by 2014," Atwal said in a statement.

Because the majority of potential challengers have yet to reach the market, the iPad is the biggest cause among tablets of slowing PC sales. The flat computer with a 9.7-inch diagonal touch screen accounts for more than 95% of the consumer tablet market today. That percentage could change as tablets hit the market from Hewlett-Packard, Samsung Electronics, Acer and others.

Along with tablets, future smartphones, which are expected to be more capable than devices in the market today, will also hurt PC sales, Gartner said. Such non-PCs offer better on-the-go computing. While it would seem that laptops would be most affected by these ultra-portable devices, desktop sales also will be impacted, as cloud-based applications make it possible to use tablets and smartphones to do tasks that once required a PC.

Gartner analyst George Shiffler blamed the PC industry for current trends, saying it has focused too much on driving sales through lower prices, and not enough on innovation. "As the PC market slows, vendors that differentiate themselves through services and technology innovation rather than unit volume and price will dictate the future," he said.

However, the new generation of mobile devices is here to stay, Gartner said, and businesses and consumers will look to these less expensive devices to do more mobile computing, thereby waiting longer to replace PCs as their importance diminishes.

Other factors affecting the PC market include expected purchasing trends in emerging markets, where PC sales are growing much faster than in mature markets. Gartner believes there is a good chance that consumers in emerging markets will leapfrog PCs in the future and move directly to alternative computing devices.

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The holiday shopping season is a great time to get tech products at discounted prices, but it also creates a golden opportunity for the Web's scam artists. The FBI, McAfee, the Better Business Bureau and F-Secure are all warning about cybercriminals who will try to take you for a ride this holiday season. Here are their most pertinent warnings and tips for staying safe:

The Infamous Free iPad

Bogus free iPad offers started popping up immediately after Apple's tablet went on sale, and they've since been banned from Facebook. Still, you might see similar offers around the Web, McAfee says, prompting you to buy other products as a condition of getting the free iPad. By now, you should realize it's too good to be true.

Gift Card Scams

That free $1,000 gift card offer you saw on Facebook? Bogus, of course. McAfee says that cybercrooks lure people into giving away their personal information or taking quizzes in exchange for these cards, which never arrive. The information is then sold to marketers or used for identity theft.

The FBI also says to use caution when purchasing gift cards through auction sites or classified ads. These can be fraudulent, and you won't get your money back. Buy directly from retailers instead.

Bogus Auctions and Classifieds

Here's a particularly tricky scheme pointed out by the FBI: On auction and classified sites, fraudsters use their own order forms to get payment details from holiday gift buyers. Then, they charge the victim's credit card and use a stolen credit card to buy the actual item, which is sent directly to the victim. In other words, you'll still get the product, but you might be liable for receiving stolen goods. To avoid this scam, be sure to use legitimate payment services like Paypal instead of providing money directly to the seller.

The feds also warn of a related scam for free or reduced-price shipping offered on auction and classified sites. The fraudsters provide fake shipping labels to the victim, and the product ends up being intercepted in transit, never delivered to its destination.

Malicious websites

For cybercriminals, spamming Google with bogus holiday gift pages is a yearly tradition. These pages could be loaded with malware or payment forms intended to steal your identity. F-Secure has created a list of what it thinks will be the highly targeted search terms this year, including Kinect for Xbox, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad. Visit retailers' websites directly when possible, use Internet security software if you must and always check for "https" in the URL bar before ordering online to ensure that the page is secure.

Wi-Fi Hackers

Public Wi-Fi networks will get a workout this holiday season as people travel, McAfee notes. This is especially true with Google offering free Wi-Fi on domestic flights from three major airlines. Check out our security tips from Google's free Wi-Fi offer at airports last year, most of which are still relevant in the skies. Number one tip: Avoid shopping and paying bills over a public network.

Source: PC World

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– Fri Nov 26, 3:37 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc is expanding the size of its Cupertino, California, home base, acquiring nearby facilities from computer pioneer and competitor Hewlett Packard Co.

The offices will give the maker of the iPhone more room for its employees as the company continues to grow, said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling.

"We now occupy 57 buildings in Cupertino and our campus is bursting at the seams," he said.

Apple's real estate transaction was first reported by The San Jose Mercury News earlier this week, which said the deal would give Apple an additional 98 acres of land, roughly doubling the size of the company's home base in Cupertino.

Apple, which had 46,600 full-time employees worldwide at the end of September, did not disclose the price it paid for the HP real estate.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic, editing by Matthew Lewis)

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By Esther Shein
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Slideshow: Best Mobile Apps For Busy Professionals

Scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have uncovered a way to make methane-powered laptops commercially viable.

Led by Shriram Ramanathan, the group has developed solid-oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), and it says it is optimistic about their use as a mobile technology. Most SOFCs are viewed as a potential eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels, since they don’t leave behind much more waste than water. Reliability, temperature and cost have been the sticking points in using SOFCs for charging laptops, phones and next-generation cars and trucks, the group said.

An electric current is created when fuel cells convert chemical energy from hydrogen or a hydrocarbon fuel like methane. “Oxygen ions travel from the cathode through the electrolyte toward the anode, where they oxidize the fuel to produce a current of electrons back toward the cathode,” according to the SEAS group.

Now, Ramanathan’s group has developed stable and functional all-ceramic, thin-film SOFCs that don’t contain platinum, which can be unreliable and expensive. "If you use porous metal electrodes, they tend to be inherently unstable over long periods of time,” Ramanathan said in a statement. “They start to agglomerate and create open circuits in the fuel cells."

The platinum-free micro-SOFCs are more reliable and less expensive, he said.

The SEAS team also demonstrated what it said is a rare feat in this field: a methane-fueled micro-SOFC operating at less than 500 degrees Celsius. Traditional SOFCs have only been practical for stationary power generation since they operate at between 800 degrees and 1,000 degrees Celsius, making them less than ideal to power a smartphone. But in the past few years, materials scientists have reached a temperature range of about 300 degrees to 500 degrees Celsius, which Ramanathan referred to as the “sweet spot.”

Material reliability is less critical when fuel cells operate at lower temperatures and allows for the use of less expensive ceramics and metallic interconnects, as well as a shorter startup time, the SEAS group said.

"Low temperature is a holy grail in this field," Ramanathan said. "If you can realize high-performance solid-oxide fuel cells that operate in the 300 to 500 degrees Celsius range, you can use them in transportation vehicles and portable electronics, and with different types of fuels."

Another important finding was the use of methane gas, which is abundant and cheap, for SOFCs. Hydrogen has traditionally been the primary fuel source, but it requires more processing when it is in a pure state, according to the SEAS group. Ramanathan said that makes hydrogen more expensive to produce and hampers the applications in which it can be used. Methane is becoming the fuel of choice, and future SEAS research “will explore new types of catalysts for methane SOFCs, with the goal of identifying affordable, earth-abundant materials that can help lower the operating temperature even further," he said.

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By Antone Gonsalves
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Facebook, which has never hesitated to go after companies it believes were trying to leverage its name recognition, has received the go-ahead to trademark the word "face."

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday issued a Notice of Allowance that essentially says that based on an examination of the social-networking site's request, the company is entitled to a trademark on "face," as it applies to the name Facebook. To get final approval, Facebook now has to file a Statement of Use that says it will use the trademark in commerce.

Approval of the trademark would give Facebook one more legal weapon as it battles other companies that use either "face" or "book" in their names. The trademark would only apply to Facebook's business as a provider of "telecommunication services, namely providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter."

Facebook's effort to trademark "face" goes back to 2008, when the company bought the trademark application of Faceparty.com, a U.K. social-networking site that launched in 2000 and applied for a trademark of "face" in 2005.

Facebook has gone after several companies that it believes were trying to piggyback on its popularity through its name. In August, the company sued Teachbook in federal court in San Jose, Calif., over its use of the word "book." Teachbook is a social network for teachers. That same month, travel Web site Placebook changed its name to TripTrace after being contacted by Facebook.

More recently, Lamebook, which has built an online parody of Facebook that contains funny comments and pictures found on the site, sued Facebook as a preemptive legal strike. The suit followed months of failed negotiations. Facebook countersued within days.

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By Eric Zeman
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

On November 12, RIM suspended the Kik messenger application, blocking BlackBerry users from downloading it. Things took a turn for the worse, and RIM has decided to put the kibosh on the app completely.

Kik said in a blog post, "We have worked day and night to build a super-fast, reliable and free cross-platform instant messaging app. This includes more than a year of development for BlackBerry smartphones. We have worked cooperatively with RIM at every step. We think it’s fair to say that, until very recently, our relationship has been nothing less than friendly."

"RIM placed Kik on BlackBerry App World without issue. Kik’s upcoming mobile music service received a special award at BlackBerry DevCon about a year ago, and was named by RIM just six weeks ago as one of the first five featured apps to be included in its upcoming BBM platform."

The Kik team is obviously surprised and confused by RIM's move. In response to press inquiries, RIM said, "RIM became aware of a number of issues and customer concerns regarding the Kik app and service. Following discussions with Kik, the app was removed from BlackBerry App World on November 12. Upon further investigation, RIM concluded that Kik had breached contractual obligations. Based on the broad scope and seriousness of the issues and concerns, RIM terminated its agreements with Kik and withdrew RIM’s support for Kik’s service."

That sounds pretty severe, but RIM doesn't elaborate. It's statement is very vague, and doesn't specify really what the issue is about.

In Kik's blog post today, the company ponders the reasoning behind RIM's move, but fails to say what it really thinks is going on here.

It says, "Some people have suggested that we’re 'too similar' to RIM's instant messaging product, and that somehow this is behind their decision. We would be surprised and disappointed if there is any truth to this, as RIM has always championed the BlackBerry ecosystem as an open platform. However, if true, the implications would go well beyond Kik to the entire mobile community, users and developers alike."

Kik's messaging service works across platforms, including Android and iOS, and it has swelled to 2.5 million users in the last few months.

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By W. David Gardner
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Slideshow: Cisco Umi Takes Telepresence To The Home

Broadcom announced Monday that it has signed an agreement to acquire privately held Gigle Networks, in a move that will boost Broadcom’s solutions for home networking over power lines technology. Broadcom said it is paying $75 million in cash for Gigle.

Gigle, which develops system on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, will see its development efforts integrated into Broadcom’s portfolio of home wired and wireless solutions, particularly in set-top box, broadband carrier access and wireless router areas, Broadcom said.

Broadcom indicated the acquisition will help its development and integration of home networking applications. The network Broadcom is focusing on in powerline, coax and wireless networking is expanding at a 32% compound annual growth rate to 2015, according to ABI Research.

In a statement, Dan Marotta, executive vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s Broadband Communications Group, said: "With the addition of Gigle Networks' powerline technology, and our proven ability and extensive experience in supporting the multiple methods to connect devices including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance), and DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), Broadcom is able to offer service providers and device manufacturers a variety of ways to deploy a whole-home connected environment."

Gigle’s powerline technology is certified by the HomePlug AV and the IEEE 1901 solutions unit, and those two organizations complement other networking technologies in the connected world. Citing an example of how the Gigle acquisition can enhance home networks, Broadcom noted that MoCA and Wi-Fi enhance advanced applications like high-definition video streaming that can enable a whole-home connected environment. Powerline, which uses existing electrical wiring in home and office infrastructures, is being viewed as an efficient and simple way to connect multiple devices throughout the home and office.

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By W. David Gardner
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Slideshow: Top 12 Firefox Add-Ons

The Mozilla Foundation has released a sort of non-profit’s annual report, "The State of Mozilla," which provides a glimpse under the covers of the popular browser and e-mail provider.

The report also updates Mozilla’s plans for the mobile world. Firefox for the Android operating system will be available "in a few months," according to the report, which noted the Firefox 4 Beta was designed to appeal to end users as well as developers.

While Mozilla didn’t release specifics, it said it has designed a prototype of an "Open Web App ecosystem" that hints at creating an open app store platform that won’t be device-specific.

"The current app model also has traits that threaten some of the characteristics that have made the web so vibrant a platform, particularly in the mobile space," the report states. It went on to note that its prototype app ecosystem includes "a system design, technical documentation and examples of what such a system would look like and work like."

Mozilla said it is in a healthy position both financially and organizationally; its revenues have grown and rose to $104 million in 2009 from $78 million in 2008. The company noted that the majority of its revenue comes from search functionality from organizations like Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

The largest piece of revenue comes from Google, with which it has enjoyed close ties. However, Google’s Chrome browser has been rapidly growing and could represent serious competition to Mozilla in the future. Mozilla said it has signed up about 400 million users, of which 140 million are active.

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By W. David Gardner
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

In the closely watched monthly ranking of search engine providers, Google and Microsoft posted small gains in October, but Yahoo, which partners with Microsoft on some technology, slipped. The results were announced by digital measuring market research firm comScore.

comScore noted that the search results represented the second month that Google’s new Instant Search features have been included in comScore’s rankings. Google moved ahead 0.2 percentage points, to a 66.3% market share, while Microsoft rose 0.3%, to 11.5% for the month. Yahoo dropped 0.2%, to a 16.5% market share. The remaining two search engines in the rankings also dropped -- 0.1% for Ask Network, to 3.6%, and AOL LLC Network fell 0.2%, to 2.1%. Ask’s results include the company’s new question-and-answer approach to search.

Google led with 11.0 billion explicit core searches out of the entire 16.6 searches conducted in October, according to comScore. Next, in order, were Yahoo with 2.7 billion searches, Microsoft, 1.9 billion; Ask Network, 598 million; and AOL, 346 million.

Search results excluded Facebook, which recently overtook Google as the Web's top online destination.

Google's Instant Search feature helped the company increase some of its rankings, according to comScore. The market research firm noted that Microsoft’s Bing service is composed of Bing results as well as Yahoo Web Search, Yahoo Image Search, and Yahoo Video Search.

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By Eric Zeman
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

The original Golden Master of iOS 4.2 was released on November 1. Apple generally follows with a wide-scale release to end users within two weeks of the Golden Master's appearance. (That would have implied a final version available to consumers by November 15.)

Instead, on November 12, Apple delivered a second Golden Master of iOS 4.2 to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch developers. The second GM was delivered, most suspect, due to a bug found in the iPad's Wi-Fi performance.

After the second Golden Master was seeded, reports of the final version's appearance ranged from November 16 all the way through November 30.

Earlier today, 9to5mac suggested that the final version of iOS 4.2 would be pushed out to end users at 1PM EST. That didn't happen. Instead, Apple kicked a third Golden Master of iOS out the door to devs.

The latest version, iOS 4.2.1, is believed to address a reported VoIP bug affecting the system. The VoIP bug was called "severe" by some, though specifics weren't reported.

This third Golden Master is being provided to developers only, who are expected to test it for problems. Developers will likely need at least several days to discover and report back to Apple any potential problems.

The iPad experienced Wi-Fi problems when it was first released, prompting Apple to provide a minor update to its software. There's no word if the previous bug is related to the old one, or if the new VoIP bug is specific to the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or all of the above.

As per usual, Apple is remaining mum. Apple often does not provide specific dates and times for iPhone and iPad software updates.

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Slideshow: Healthcare Innovators

In the midst of a national debate on whether entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid can cut costs while running their systems more efficiently, a new center for Medicare and Medicaid innovation was launched Tuesday to explore better ways to deliver healthcare while improving payment systems that can save money.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said the center, which was created by the Affordable Care Act, will consult a diverse group of healthcare stakeholders including hospitals, doctors, consumers, payers, states, employers, advocates and relevant federal agencies, to discuss ways in which healthcare providers can coordinate their efforts, supported by technology, to drive greater efficiency into healthcare delivery.

"For too long, healthcare in the United States has been fragmented -- failing to meet patients' basic needs, and leaving both patients and providers frustrated. Payment systems often fail to reward providers for coordinating care and keeping their patients healthy reinforcing this fragmentation," Donald Berwick, CMS Administrator, said in a statement. "The Innovation Center will help change this trend by identifying, supporting and evaluating models of care that both improve the quality of care patients receive and lower costs."

The center will focus its attention on three main areas. These are:

-- Better Care for Individuals: Improving care for patients in formal care settings like hospitals, nursing homes and doctors' offices, and developing innovations that make care safer, more patient-centered and more efficient. The Innovation Center will also promote the use of "bundled payments," an approach to paying for care where providers collaborate to manage multiple procedures as part of a single episode with a single payment, rather than the current fee-for-service method of submitting separate bills for each procedure, which leads to higher costs.

-- Coordinating Care to Improve Health Outcomes for Patients: Developing new models that make it easier for doctors and clinicians in different care settings to work together to care for a patient. Examples include identifying and widely deploying the best advanced primary care and health home models, and supporting innovations in accountable care organizations.

-- Community Care Models: Exploring steps to improve public health and make communities healthier and stronger. The Innovation Center will work to identify and address major public health crises and the appropriate interventions for areas of great concern, such as obesity, smoking and heart disease.

The Innovation Center will offer contracts of up to $1 million each for 15 states that design demonstration projects to fully integrate care for dual eligibles (individuals eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid). According to CMS, dual eligibles account for 16 to 18 percent of enrollees in Medicare and Medicaid, but roughly 25 to 45 percent of spending in these programs respectively. Significant health benefits and savings can come from better coordinating the care of low-income seniors and people with disabilities. States may apply for resources to support the demonstration projects they design beginning in December. In 2011, the Center will be announcing two additional demonstrations that will focus respectively on providers and beneficiaries.

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By Thomas Claburn
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Moments before Web 2.0 Summit co-chair John Battelle invited Research In Motion CEO Jim Balsillie on stage, he asked attendees how many had BlackBerry mobile phones and somewhere between 10% to 20% of the audience members raised a hand. Then he asked how many used to have BlackBerry mobile phones and noted that the number of hands was comparable.

The perception is that RIM's grasp on its market is slipping as adoption of Apple's iPhone and Android phones surges. That may not jibe with reality: Earlier on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker presented a slide showing that RIM's smartphone market share had grown from 7% in Q1, 2006, to 15% in Q3, 2010.

But RIM is at a transitional moment and concerns about the future health of its platform deserve some consideration.

Asked about his view of Apple, Balsillie did not mince words: "We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple," he said.

"We believe you can bring mobile to the Web," he said. "You don't need to go through some control point SDK. You don't need an app for the Web."

Balsillie made it clear that he's all for native apps on mobile devices. But he stressed that proprietary tools are not necessary to make content mobile.

"It's really not about a set of proprietary tools," he said. "We completely disagree with that point of view."

He predicted that proprietary mobile computing would be a passing phase like the DRM era for music.

Balsillie talked up the performance of his company's forthcoming PlayBook, noting how well it performs in a video that has been posted to YouTube. "It's like three to four times faster than an iPad," he said. Yet asked whether he had one to show, he demurred.

Balsillie also balked when asked to comment on a competitor that isn't Apple. During a few minutes of audience questioning, David Levin, CEO of United Business Media, which owns TechWeb, asked whether it is over for Nokia (Levin was previously CEO of Symbian).

Balsillie initially declined to comment. Prodded by Battelle, he allowed that big shifts, like the shift from feature phones to smart phones, can be tough.

Asked to define RIM, Balsillie flashed his company's enterprise credentials. While recognizing that IT has been consumerized, he said you still can't dismiss enterprise requirements. "We sell performance," he said. "We sell Web fidelity and Web tools. We sell CIO, professional-grade requirements."

RIM, he said, is about "innovative performance and constructive alignment."

And someday soon, RIM will sell the PlayBook. Just not today.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt kicked off Web 2.0 Summit this year, and while he talked broadly about a range of issues Google is involved with (and that's a broad range), hosts John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly couldn't wait to tee Schmidt up to announce that Google is getting into Near Field Communications (NFC). Schmidt had an actual phone, with the brand well hidden. It will contain an NFC chip, and some special sauce in Gingerbread, the company's upcoming version of Android due in just a few weeks.

Using NFC in a phone, users can theoretically just "tap and pay" (O'Reilly called it "bump to buy") for example. This requires an ecosystem of merchants, payment providers and payment processors, and while this ecosystem is starting to form, it's still evolving. Schmidt later told a gathering of reporters that broader acceptance is probably a year away.

Beyond raw commerce transactions, NFC can also enable the mobility of other private information -- say for use by healthcare providers, or for making offers to mobile consumers and so on.

Schmidt said that this chip is already being used in thousands of places, including on many credit cards, and at merchants around the world. He later told reporters that the technology provides a higher level of authentication and identification than the magnetic stripe, which makes it very attractive to credit card companies for reducing fraud.

There was plenty of buzz about what the phone was (Motorola? Nexus S?). Schmidt's cheeky response to questions about whether Google would produce a new phone: "I said there would never be a Nexus 2."

Schmidt was more interested in talking about what applications could be written on top of NFC. On the one hand, he said he didn't have any ideas, noting that NFC in phones is still just beginning; but on the other hand when asked about Google writing its own native apps, he said: "We've been looking at it. Nothing to announce." So he does have some ideas.

He did not address what Google's direct business model will be here, but this is typical Google MO, at least as Schmidt likes to tell it -- come up with a cool idea out of engineering (in this case, a demo in a virtual world), develop it, see what happens. But he did say that although he thinks Android is a "more powerful, more scalable platform [than Google's competitors], Android won't succeed just if it's better." He said that Google has to broaden Android's acceptance, and that means getting the entire ecosystem to embrace it. Adding things like NFC helps do that.

He also said that Android's growing acceptance could help spur NFC: "We bring some volume" he said, in a bit of an understatement. (He also said that about a third of Android usage is happening "off the reservation" -- that is, not on tablets and phones.)

If Google is an information company, as Schmidt often says, then it benefits from more information flowing across the company's own ecosystem, enabling or furthering systems like, say, mobile ads or search. In fact, Schmidt talked about autonomous search, where your private information (used "with permission" he was careful to say) -- about location, about personal preferences -- is used to find things on your behalf.

Fritz Nelson is the editorial director for InformationWeek and the Executive Producer of TechWebTV. Fritz writes about startups and established companies alike, but likes to exploit multiple forms of media into his writing.

By Fritz Nelson
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

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By Paul McDougall
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

IBM on Thursday said it finalized its deal to acquire data warehousing specialist Netezza for $27 per share, or about $1.7 billion. Big Blue first announced it struck a deal for the company on Sept. 20.

IBM has now invested more than $14 billion over the past four years to bolster its footprint in the data analytics market. Netezza's operations will be folded into the company's Information Management unit.

IBM executives have said the addition of Netezza would broaden their company's portfolio of offerings around database and business intelligence platforms.

"Netezza strongly complements our business analytics capabilities and client base. Together we have the opportunity to quickly leverage the technology and accelerate the offering," said senior VP Steve Mills, in a statement at the time the agreement was disclosed.

Netezza went public in 2007, and quickly made a name for itself by developing data warehouse appliances that combine hardware, software, and business intelligence tools in a single box. Its list of high-profile customers includes AOL Advertising, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, British Sky Broadcasting Group, and the Marriott hotel group.

The company counted about 500 employees at the time of its acquisition by IBM. IBM did not say whether there would be any job cuts associated with the transaction.

IBM believes Netezza's one-stop shop approach to analytics and data warehousing makes its offerings appealing not just to large enterprises, but also to departments, branch offices, and smaller businesses.

"It's no longer just the CIO, every single department from finance to marketing professionals is tapping into the capabilities of analytics to draw meaningful insights," said Arvind Krishna, IBM's general manager for Information Management.

"The addition of Netezza will reinforce IBM's focus in understanding client's needs by providing them a broader set of analytics capabilities and bringing the power of analytics right into the hands of business users at every level within an organization," said Krishna.

IBM pegs the overall market opportunity in business analytics at $100 billion and said its cut should reach about $16 billion by 2015.

Observers say the addition of Netezza would put IBM on a more competitive footing with other data warehouse players, like Oracle and Teradata. "With IBM acquiring NZ, it will be able to combine IBM's XIV storage, as well as its blade and networking hardware for a fully integrated appliance offering," said Wells Fargo analyst Jason Maynard, in a recent research note.

Netezza's simplified approach to data analytics has resulted in rapid growth over its short life. In August, the company reported a 45% year-over-year increase in second quarter revenue, to $63.8 million, while net income ballooned from $700,000 to $3.3 million over the period.

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The MMA conducted a study with Luth Research, and recently published the results. Not only will cell phones be central to holiday planning this year for 59% of mobile consumers, but 64% said they plan to use their phones to help scout out deals before leaving for the stores.

"U.S. consumers increasingly view their mobile phone as their go-to device for shopping and managing their lives, and this survey shows how that trend will play out this holiday season," said Peter A. Johnson, vice president of market intelligence, MMA, and author of the study.

"Marketers, brands and merchants that ignore or underestimate this trend risk missing out on a powerful new opportunity for reaching and serving virtually every demographic group. The good news is that the October 2010 U.S. Mobile Consumer Briefing provides a wealth of insights that they can apply when developing and executing their 2010 holiday strategies."

The study also concluded that:

• Asians, Hispanics and adults ages 25-34 are the demographic groups most likely to use their phone to a great extent for holiday shopping and celebration planning.
• Thirteen percent of mobile holiday shoppers expect to use their phone to purchase or pay for gifts.
• Searching for locations where a gift is sold, and comparing prices, are the two most common holiday-related tasks that mobile holiday shoppers anticipate using their mobile phone for.
• Movies, music, consumer electronics and books are the top gift types that mobile holiday shoppers thought would be helpful to shop for using a mobile phone.
• Among mobile holiday shoppers, Hispanics and Asians were more likely to think that toys or games would be helpful to shop for with a mobile phone.

The proliferation of helpful shopping tools, such as ShopSavvy, and barcode scanners, will surely be a boon to holiday shoppers. These often help reduce the pain points of traveling from store to store to store to find the best deal. Further, having access to official apps and web sites from retailers such as Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and Home Depot will further ease the pain of holiday shopping.

"Holiday shoppers are always in a time crunch, and in this economy, they're in a budget crunch, too," said Jacqueline Rosales, EVP, Business Development & Client Service, Luth Research. "Both of these factors have them relying on their mobile phone more than ever as a tool for finding bargains, the right gift and the quickest way to get to a particular merchant. This dependence makes the mobile channel a highly effective way for brands, marketers and merchants to reach consumers this holiday shopping season, including by mobile-enabling campaigns that involve traditional media."

The study was conducted in October, and surveyed 1,000 adults.

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Analytics Slideshow Calculating Cloud ROI

OS33 announced Tuesday its eponymous OS33 fully hosted IT automation platform, intended to simplify resellers' provisioning cloud hosted services.

OS33 lets MSPs and other resellers create a catalog of pre-integrated business apps and third-party SaaS offerings, from which SMBs and other customers can then select. OS33 includes billing, chargeback, ticketing and reporting features for the MSP, allowing them to offer services on a turnkey basis.

According to the company, OS33 "enables providers to have access to an unlimited supply of cloud-based infrastructure and turn it into business-ready web and Windows-based applications. From a single interface, MSPs can provision servers, deploy and package custom applications, select from a broad catalog of pre-integrated business software, and activate third-party SaaS offerings. The result is the OS33 Webtop, a cloud-based desktop from which end users can access their company provisioned applications, tools, file systems and intranet from a single integrated interface that can be accessed from almost any browser-capable device."

MSPs can add new clients in five minutes or less and provision them with business applications from a catalog of hosted software and third-party SaaS offerings, along with integrated collaboration tools, according to the company.

"OS33 allows MSPs to access cloud resources wholesale and resell retail," according to Jacob Kazakevich, president and CTO of OS33.

The benefit for SMBs is that the cloud resellers they turn to can now offer a wider range of cloud, SaaS, and hosted services, with common provisioning and support, and, potentially some savings. Also, OS33 includes collaboration features, such as sharing data in real-time and posting announcements.

"The cost of end users goes down dramatically," according to Kazakevich. "For a business that might be spending over $100 per user per month, using our services we've seen that drop dramatically, by at least 30 to 40 per cent."

The OS33 platform includes a Cloud Connector, Cloud Control Panel, Application Delivery, and Webtop GUI. Applications and services that OS33 can be used to deliver include cloud SaaS offerings, Services and applications provisioned using OS33 can include servers, file storage, databases, back-end applications, standard hosted Windows applications like Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, and Microsoft Office, as well as cloud and SaaS services from providers like SalesForce.com, Amazon Web Services, Google, Rackspace, Equinox, iland, Sungard, and Coresite, as well as security and access control, mobile support,

OS33 has been in use at five large MSPs, and is now generally available to MSPs and other resellers. "We have over 10,000 end users and four to five hundred small businesses currently using us," said Kazakevich.

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Google said Monday it has partnered with three airlines to give holiday travelers free in-flight Wi-Fi.

The temporary giveaway of Gogo's broadband service applies to all domestic flights with AirTran, Delta and Virgin America. The promotion starts Nov. 20 and ends Jan. 2, 2011. Gogo, a service of in-flight broadband provider Aircell, normally costs $11 for 24-hour access.

Google's Chrome browser team is sponsoring the giveaway, but a person will not need Chrome to access the service. That makes sense, given that Chrome is a distant third behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox in the browser market, accounting for less than 8% of the browsers used to access the Web, according to Net Applications.

The promotion is expected to bring free Wi-Fi to more than 700 airliners and 15 million travelers during the holiday season. This is the second straight year Google has brought free Wi-Fi to holiday travelers. Last year, Google partnered with Virgin America to offer Internet access at no charge to more than 50 aiports, as well as to in-flight passengers.

The promotion last year ran from Nov. 10 to Jan. 15, 2010, all paid for by Google. The in-flight service was provided by Gogo, while the airport service was through Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others. Users were given the option to donate to Engineers Without Borders, which was matched by Google. This year, Google decided to focus on the in-flight service and drop the airport service.

Google has worked with Virgin America for a while. The two drew closer last month, when the airline announced it would shift from Microsoft Exchange to Gmail to cut e-mail costs in half over the course of a year. Virgin America expected all 1,700 of its employees to be using Gmail before mid-November.

By Antone Gonsalves
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

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Slideshow: Apple iPhone 4, A True Teardown

One day after overwhelming demand drove Skyfire from Apple's App Store, the Flash-playing iPhone browser returned in limited quantities.

Skyfire Labs, makers of the popular software, brought the browser back to the App Store Friday, but warned that it would be released in "batches." Once a certain number of downloads was reached, Skyfire Labs would suspend availability until its servers had digested the additional workload.

"We are taking this approach because Skyfire believes a good user experience should come first, and we would rather have fewer, happier customers, and add new users as we can support them," Jeff Glueck, chief executive of Skyfire Labs, said in the company's blog.

Skyfire Labs pulled its namesake application from the App Store after only a five-hour debut. With the number of downloads growing rapidly, Skyfire Labs was forced to remove the application, or risk having its server and bandwidth capacity overwhelmed.

Skyfire Labs' capacity problems are due to how its technology handles Adobe's Flash technology, which is used across the web to view video and other content, but is not supported natively in the iPhone. The Skyfire browser doesn't actually run Flash. Instead, Flash content is decoded first on Skyfire Lab's servers into HTML5 on the fly and then delivered to the handset. The proxy-based system has received positive reviews for performance.

Skyfire's popularity is an indication of Flash's importance for playing online video. Nevertheless, Apple is pushing HTML5, a relatively new technology, as a better alternative, claiming Flash hurts the performance of the iPhone and uses up too much battery power. Adobe denies the claims.

Despite its refusal to support Flash, Apple recognizes its ubiquity on the web. In September, the company changed its iOS 4.0 developer agreement to allow the use of just about any programming tool, including the Adobe Flash Packager for the iPhone. IOS is the operating system used in the iPhone.

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By Thomas Claburn
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Google has changed the terms of service for users of its Contacts API to ensure that if data goes out, it can also come back in.

The change is aimed squarely at Facebook, which doesn't allow the automated export of social graph data, specifically contacts or friends.

"Many other sites allow users to import and export their information, including contacts, quickly and easily," said a Google spokesperson in an e-mailed statement. "But sites that do not, such as Facebook, leave users in a data dead end."

Google says that it decided to change its approach because users often are unaware that once they import their contacts into sites like Facebook they don't have an automated export mechanism to get their data out.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. The company last month announced limited (manual) information export capabilities, but stopped short of giving users programmatic access to their data or providing a way to remove their data from Facebook's servers.

This new stance may seem like a step backwards for Google, which has gone to great lengths to make most user-owned data portable. But the company insists that it's not limiting user access to data; rather it's preventing automated access through its APIs when services that use its APIs don't offer the same access in return. The idea is to prevent Facebook from implementing a mechanism to automatically copy Google Contacts to Facebook without allowing Google to create a similar mechanism to automatically copy Facebook Friends to Google.

"It's important that when we automate the transfer of contacts to another service, users have some certainty that the new service meets a baseline standard of data portability," Google's spokesperson said. "We hope that reciprocity will be an important step towards creating a world of true data liberation--and that this move will encourage other Web sites to allow users to automate the export of their contacts as well."

Data portability has become a critical weapon against customer lock-in and customer inertia. That's why Google created tools to allow users to move data from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes to Gmail and Google Apps.

But Google is not fully committed to automated export in all circumstances. As Harvard assistant professor Benjamin Edelman pointed out in 2008, Google's AdWords API prohibits automated export of AdWords data. Programmatic access to that data would make it easier for Microsoft, for example, to compete for Google's advertising customers. The contractual language has changed since 2008, but Edelman says the terms say the same thing in a more convoluted form.

"It's hard to see why Google should be allowed to lock up its crown jewels, but Facebook should not allowed to lock up its crown jewels," said Edelman in a phone interview.

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By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson, Ap Technology Writer – 2 hrs 16 mins ago

NEW YORK – Cable companies have been losing TV subscribers at an ever faster rate in the last few months, and satellite TV isn't picking up the slack.

That could be a sign that Internet TV services such as Netflix and Hulu are finally starting to entice people to cancel cable, though company executives are pointing to the weak economy and housing market for now.

Third-quarter results reported Thursday by major cable TV companies show major losses, but don't settle the question of what's causing them.

If "cord-cutting" in favor of Internet video is finally taking hold, that has wide-ranging implications. Consumers who use the Internet to get their movies and TV shows bypass not just the cable companies, but the cable networks that produce the content. The move could have the same disruptive effect on the TV and movie industries as digital downloads have already had on music.

A few weeks ago, the CEO of phone company Verizon Communications Inc. likened cord-cutting to what started happening to the local-phone companies five or six years ago, when people started giving up their landlines in favor of relying solely on their cell phones.

"The first thing when that happens is you deny it," Ivan Seidenberg said. "I know the drill. I have been there."

On Thursday, Time Warner Cable Inc.'s chief operating officer, Landel Hobbs, said the company doesn't see evidence of people dropping cable in favor of the Internet. He said the biggest subscriber losses have been among people who don't have cable broadband services; high-speed Internet — from cable or a competitor — is key to watching video online. These people seem to be going to satellite or giving up on pay TV entirely.

On the theory that college students might be among the first to drop cable TV, the company looked at changes in subscriber figures in college towns such as Austin, Texas, and Columbus, Ohio. They weren't out of line with previous years, and they corresponded to the level of student enrollment, he said.

"We'll continue to monitor cord-cutting, but haven't found evidence where you might expect to see it," Hobbs told analysts on a conference call.

Time Warner Cable lost 155,000 video subscribers in the July-September quarter, compared with 64,000 a year ago.

The only larger cable company, Comcast Corp., reported last week that its subscriber loss more than doubled in the third quarter, to 275,000. Comcast said many of those leaving had taken advantage of low introductory rates that the company offered last year when the analog TV broadcast network as shut down.

All together, seven of the country's nine largest pay-TV companies, representing about 75 percent of the subscriber total, had reported their results for the third quarter by Thursday. They showed a combined gain of 95,700 video subscribers, or a 0.6 percent increase at an annualized rate, less than the growth of the population. In the third quarter of last year, they gained 405,800 subscribers.

(Missing from the top nine: the third-largest cable company, Cox Communications, which is privately held and doesn't report subscriber counts publicly; and the second-largest satellite TV company, Dish Network Corp., which reports results Friday.)

Cable companies have been losing video subscribers for some time, but they have been compensating by upgrading basic subscribers to more expensive digital tiers, as well as adding broadband and phone subscribers.

However, both Time Warner Cable and Cablevision Systems Corp. lost digital video subscribers in the third quarter. Both added record-low number of phone subscribers, as years of growth are coming to an end.

Meanwhile, Netflix Inc.'s streaming service has become so popular that it is now the largest source of U.S. Internet traffic during peak evening hours, according to Sandvine Inc., a Canadian company that supplies traffic-management equipment to Internet service providers.

A variety of gadgets can send Netflix's streams to the living room TV, including game consoles and the $99 Apple TV box. Many high-end TVs now come with the built-in ability to play Internet content.

Thomas Clancy Jr., 35, in Long Beach, N.Y., canceled the family's Cablevision subscription this spring. He said he has been happy with Netflix and other Internet video services since then, even though there isn't a lot of live sports to be had online.

"The amount of sports that I watched certainly didn't justify a hundred-dollar-a-month expense for all this stuff. I mean, that's twelve hundred dollars a year," Clancy said. "Twelve hundred dollars is ... near a vacation."

But Clancy — who has no relation to the thriller writer — is also an example of the hurdles cord cutters face. He uses an Internet-connected Blu-ray player to get Netflix movies to the TV. And he pulls a cable from his computer to the TV for Internet content Netflix doesn't have. Clancy owns a computer consulting firm and is tech-savvy enough to do all that. Most people wouldn't know how.

Cablevision wanted to raise Clancy's Internet bill when he canceled TV service. That would have made cord-cutting less attractive, but he happens to live in an area where Verizon provides Internet service at speeds that are comparable with the best cable has to offer. He got a better deal from Verizon and switched to that provider.

Most people who have the technological skills to take advantage of Internet video find that the selection of movies and shows isn't broad enough to make the jump worth it, Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said.

On the other hand, poor people have an excellent motive to cut cable and simply replace it with an antenna or nothing at all, he said.

"The price cable TV has risen to the point where it's simply not affordable to lots of lower-income homes. And right now there are an awful lot of lower-income homes," Moffett said. "The evidence suggests that what we're seeing is a poverty problem rather than a technology phenomenon."

In addition, high unemployment means fewer new households, as kids are probably delaying moving out of their parents' houses, or people move in with roommates. That can reduce the number of households that pay for TV.

Cable companies would like to get low-income customers back with cheaper cable packages, but their hands are tied. Content providers such as The Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. won't license their channels one by one, so subscribers have to take big, expensive channel packages, or very basic ones, which offer little beyond what's available with an antenna.

Content providers now get billions of dollars in fees from cable service providers, and they want to make sure that whatever new industry model comes along, they'll get paid. It's not obvious yet that Internet video will let them sustain their profit levels.

Six companies create the content that consumes 85 percent of U.S. viewing hours, Moffett said. "Until they get on board, the train's not leaving the station."

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By Antone Gonsalves
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has raised an additional $650 million to invest in technology startups.

The firm, whose general partners include former Netscape Communications founder Marc Andreessen, launched in June 2009 with an initial fund of $300 million. The second round of fundraising, announced Wednesday, raises the firm's investment capital to nearly $1 billion.

Andreessen Horowitz said the additional money would be used to invest in startups that are just launching or are already growing. "As a matter of core philosophy, we invest in companies, not stages -- we're stage-agnostic," general partner Ben Horowitz said in a statement.

The firm's portfolio includes investments in 28 companies, including Zynga, which makes the most popular games on Facebook. Andreessen Horowitz also led the second round of funding for Foursquare, a maker of location-based games for mobile phones that owns a piece of Internet telephony company Skype.

The firm's investments typically range from $50,000 to get a new company started to $50 million to those already growing. While acknowledging it could have raised more money, Andreessen Horowitz said it stopped at $650 million to avoid having to lower the criteria in order to make more investments.

"We have seen other firms raise so much money that they lower their quality bar in order to 'put the money to work,' " Horowitz said in his blog. "We would strongly prefer to run out of money sooner and be forced to raise a third fund than to have that problem."

Horowitz said the second round of fundraising was needed quickly because the firm's initial investments stemmed from investments Horowitz and Andreessen had made as angel investors before launching the firm. Many of those angel investments had become venture-stage startups by the time the partners formed the VC firm. Those startups included RockMelt, Nicira and Apptio. In addition, the firm had invested $50 million in Skype.

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Google may be poised to get back into the hardware business with the imminent launch of a Google-branded Chrome OS notebook.

A company spokesperson declined to comment, but a report in Taiwan's Digitimes says unnamed sources at electronics component makers tell of a Google-branded Chrome OS notebook that will be launched before the end of the month.

On November 19, 2009, Google said, "Google Chrome OS will be ready for consumers this time next year."

Inventec will be manufacturing Google's Chrome OS notebook, Digitimes says, with initial shipments expected to reach 60,000 to 70,000. Acer and HP are expected to launch their Chrome OS notebooks in December.

Google's acknowledged Chrome OS partners include: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

Google's first venture into consumer hardware ended ignominiously earlier this year when the company decided to stop selling its Google-branded Nexus One phone after only a few months. But this time could be different because computer retail channels aren't controlled to the extent that mobile device retail channels are ruled by mobile network operators.

Google's forthcoming Chrome OS is a big deal for the company and consumers. For decades, consumers have had only two operating system choices for their computers: Mac OS and Windows. There's Linux, of course, but it's never really been a viable option for those who aren't technically savvy.

Google wants Chrome OS to appeal to the masses. It comes at the right price -- free -- but it faces many obstacles, not the least of which is Google's lack of retail success. Against the retail might of Apple and Microsoft and the years of brand loyalty accrued by those companies, Google will have to do a lot more to sell Chrome OS than it did to sell the Nexus One.

Google faces years of evangelism to convince the world that the Web is all that's necessary. And given how quickly the company gave up on Wave, Google will have to prove that it's committed to Chrome OS for the long haul, both to entice consumers and to keep its partners interested.

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By Thomas Claburn
Read the Original Article at InformationWeek

Facebook on Friday said that an unspecified data broker had been paying Facebook developers for user identification numbers (UIDs) and that it has suspended a number of Facebook developers -- less than a dozen -- for six months as punishment.

The company said that no private user data had been sold -- Facebook does not consider UIDs to be private even though they can be used to track individual users -- and it said that the UIDs transferred were not used to access private data.

"Facebook has never sold and will never sell user information," said Facebook engineer Mike Vernal in a blog post. "We also have zero tolerance for data brokers because they undermine the value that users have come to expect from Facebook."

Facebook does not have to sell user information since most Facebook users give their information away to Facebook developers when they choose to use Facebook applications.

Facebook did not name the data broker that had paid for UIDs, but Vernal's blog post said that the company had also reached an agreement with RapLeaf, "the data broker who came forward to work with us on this situation." As part of the agreement, RapLeaf will delete UIDs in its possession and refrain from future activities involving Facebook, directly or indirectly.

The acknowledgement comes following a Wall Street Journal investigation last month that found popular Facebook apps revealed UID numbers. UID numbers can be used to determine a Facebook user's name and possibly other information. The principal privacy risk is that UIDs can be used to associate a Facebook identity with actions outside of Facebook.

In response to that investigation, Facebook put forward a plan to enable the optional encryption of UID numbers. The company has published a technical outline and solicited feedback from developers. It maintains that the additional issue of information exposed through HTTP Referer headers must be addressed by a broad range of technology companies.

The company also said that it is tightening its policies about how UIDs can be used, stored, and transmitted.

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