CNET News - Apple
Originally posted at News - Mobile
Originally posted at MacFixIt
Originally posted at iPhone Atlas
T3 News
Proporta shows off its latest range of Ted Baker iPhone 5 cases ahead of the official launch of the next generation Apple smartphone
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Commander Shepard’s space epic was always planned as a trilogy and whilst it looks as if that (space) ship has sailed that doesn’t rule out another game in the same universe.
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HTC has unveiled two Windows 8-powered phones – the Windows Phone 8X and 8S
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After a year of fierce smartphone competition, is Apple still leader of the smartphone pack?
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iPhone 5 reviews have started to pour in and while a couple of critics are guarded in their praise, it seems Apple's new handset is a hit
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Dell reveals Latitude 6430u, Latitude 10 Tablet and OptiPlex 9010 desktop aimed at tempting business consumers
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Consumers who pre-order the new Apple iPhone 5 from today face a 3-4 week wait
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iPhone 5 pre-orders have been hit with delays and consumers who ordered them
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Sony have revealed a set of brand new slimmer, cheaper PS3 consoles at the Tokyo Game Show
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LG has confirmed that it’s still eyeing up Microsoft’s Windows 8 platform for its own devices, according to the Techradar
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Microsoft is urging Windows users to install a free piece of security software, following the discovery of a “zero-day” vulnerability in Internet Explorer, which hackers are currently exploiting to remotely hijack computers
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Firm sees huge uptake for its latest blower
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BioWare has announced Dragon Age III: Inquisition, the next installment in its hugely popular fantasy RPG series, will be released next year
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Who fancies a massive game of Angry Birds?
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Apple fans have started tearing into Samsung's new advert for the Galaxy S3 smartphone which mocks the iPhone 5
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Tarsier Studios helps celebrate our best year yet with portable PlayStation shrine
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Electrolux Grand Cuisine home cooking system allows consumers to take advantage of technology used by professional chefs
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Gillette and Google launches a dedicated football channel on YouTube which will bring HD highlights and news from around the European leagues. Just not the Premier League...
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Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has announced tha the forthcoming Surface tablet will be priced between £200 and £500
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Fujifilm XF1 has revealed the XF1, a pocket-sized, compact digital camera, which is set to go on sale in November later this year
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Sleeping Dogs has maintained its position for another week at the top of the UK Games Chart
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Canon’s sharp new EOS 6D is set to be officially unveiled at Photokina this week. But camera fans hungry for details don’t have to wait, with a full spec sheet slipping out online.
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With Photokina set to kick off, the next week is set to be a big one for camera fanatics. And ahead of the slew of upcoming official unveilings, two new Olympus cameras have appeared online.
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Samsung is priming its first wave of attacks on the iPhone 5, with a newspaper ad laying into Apple’s new handset, which was revealed earlier this week. The Korean giant and Cupertino have been locked in a legal tussle surrounding their smartphones, with Apple winning a resounding victory in a California courtroom last month.
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Techdirt.
That's because it seems to be claiming that Rackspace is responsible for... GitHub. Now, it's true that Rackspace, one of the most popular hosting companies out there, does provide hosting services to GitHub, but that doesn't mean that Rackspace is Github -- though you couldn't tell that from the filing. Now, it isn't just filing about GitHub, but also Rackspace Cloud Servers, which obviously are a Rackspace product. The patents being sued over are basically the same batch as we wrote about last year, but with one addition (added at the top -- it wasn't in last year's post because... it was only granted this year):
- 8,099,420: Accessing data in a data processing system
- 8,001,096: Computer file system using content‐dependent file identifiers
- 7,949,662: De‐duplication of data in a data processing system
- 7,945,544: Similarity‐based access control of data in a data processing system
- 7,945,539: Distributing and accessing data in a data processing system
- 7,802,310: Controlling access to data in a data processing system
- 6,928,442: Enforcement and policing of licensed content using content‐based identifiers
- 6,415,280: Identifying and requesting data in network using identifiers which are based on contents of data
- 5,978,791: Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby identical data items have the same identifiers
After reviewing PersonalWeb's patents, we propose that the USPTO indeed mold a "Pham" award to best commemorate the ultimate, the outrageous, the most horrifically unacceptable patent examination performance of the current patent system.To be fair, it seems like Pham has plenty of company.
There is also the oddity of Level 3 being a plaintiff on the case, though it sounds like it's just along for the ride as a silent partner:
Level 3 has joined in this Complaint pursuant to its contractual obligations under the Agreement, at the request of PersonalWeb.Basically, it sounds like part of the licensing deal in which PersonalWeb ended up with some Level 3 patents, and Level 3 gets a cut of some of the profits.
For its part, Rackspace has rightfully spoken out about the ridiculousness of this. What's good to see is that they don't just focus on the insanity of this particular case (though that is discussed), but the patent system as a whole:
In fact, GitHub is a perfect example of a company that is built to foster and enhance innovation. The GitHub repository service for software development projects has achieved legendary status among open source developers all over the world. GitHub has over 2.1 million users hosting over 3.7 million repositories. They are a paragon of innovation. Yet PersonalWeb has the audacity to file a lawsuit which alleges that “Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub Code Hosting Service” infringe some obscure patent from 1999 that has nothing to do with Rackspace and GitHub. Who is truly innovating here, PersonalWeb or Rackspace and GitHub? PersonalWeb is not the issue of course. They are just another patent troll attempting to take advantage of bad law. It is their nature. They look for opportunity, and patent litigation can be very profitable. The real problem is the law. According to a recent study by James Bessen and Michael Meurer of the Boston University School of Law, titled “The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes,” patent trolls cost the American economy $29 billion in 2011. The authors found that patent troll litigation affected 5,842 defendants in 2011.It's good to see more companies speaking out and recognizing that this is a widespread problem that needs to be addressed, rather than a narrowly focused one on the margins.
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- The German-designed FLIZ is a modern take on the velocipede -- and it looks pretty dorky. Riders of this bike are hanging from a harness, and they "pedal" by simply walking... so there's not that much mechanical advantage. [url]
- Normally, kids on skateboards go down the handrails of stairs, but a skateboard design called the Stair Rover tackles stairs head on. But the Stair Rover probably solves a problem that few people really wanted to fix.... [url]
- The pogo stick isn't exactly a means of transportation, but it's become an extreme sport. The Guinness Book of World Records has recorded the highest jump at 9 feet 6 inches (over a bar). [url]
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And so we have another such story, in which Roger Bramkin, Wikimedia trustee, is being accused of running a pay-for-play system using Wikipedia's "Did You Know" and GLAM projects to keep his day job clients in the wiki bloodstream. Essentially, it appears Bramkin took the country of Gibraltar on as a consulting client and then routinely pumped their stories into Wikipedia.
Roger Bamkin, trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK, whose LinkedIn page describes him as a high-return-earning PR consultant, appeared to be using Wikipedia's main page "Did You Know" feature and the resources of Wikipedia's GLAM WikiProject (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) initiative to pimp his client's project.Now, it would be easy for anyone so inclined to throw their hands around and make a great deal of noise about how this proves Wikipedia's unreliability. Crowdsourcing, it would seem, has led to corruption of the bloodstream. This hand-wringing would be particularly easy in light of a second such Wikipedian in Residence (an editor held in high esteem) being found to have run a similar operation focused on SEO and Wikipedia pages for paying clients. Wikipedians in Residence are typically required to recuse themselves from editing pages in which they have a conflict of interest, and these incidences seem to violently violate those rules.
But here's what is being swept under the rug with all the hand-waving: it was the Wikipedia community members who found all this out and are bringing it to light. This entire incident began on a Wikipedia discussion page over abuse of DYK and that is exactly how Wikipedia is supposed to work. So, while conflicts of interest issues and erroneous entries in Wikipedia are certainly a huge concern, it is selective bias at work to point to them as examples for why crowdsourcing information doesn't work while also failing to mention that the same crowd was responsible for its ceasing.
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With the numbers and locations that the index shows, you can see that despite the harsh penalties imposed on those caught filesharing, people still don't care.
The data shows just how mainstream filesharing is now. It isn't just members of Anonymous sitting behind their Macbooks downloading the obscure doom metal of Sunn O)))) the culprits are your next door neighbours, your relatives, your own kids and perhaps (probably) even you. That's the problem for the record labels who, along with the government, have tried to stigmatise the practice as much as possible. But those who have grown up getting whatever music they want for free are not suddenly going to become nostalgic vinyl-heads who are willing to pay £11.99 for a CD – to them it makes no sense and the rose-tinted memories of buying a physical record from an actual person don't exist. And the message that filesharing is stealing and equal with nicking a car doesn't hold much water when so many people are busy doing it.If so many people are filesharing despite the best efforts of groups like BPI to demonize the practice, what is there to be done? What do the actual musicians think? Well, this is where another interesting aspect of the index comes in. Not only does the index report on the location of those sharing, it also indexed the most downloaded artists. Using this data, Musicmetrics found that Ed Sheeran was the most downloaded artist in all of the UK. So what does he think? It helps him sell tickets.
I've sold 1.2 million albums, and the stat is that there's 8 million downloads of that as well illegally.If the record labels and the BPI were correct, Ed here would be slowly dying in a gutter somewhere, not selling concert tickets at £18 a pop. But the fact remains, he is. He is succeeding because these filesharers are becoming fans and want to support him. But why do they download instead of buy? What is stopping them? There are too many barriers or not enough options according to the Guardian.
Nine million people have my record, in England, which is quite a nice feeling.
I'm still selling albums, but I'm selling tickets at the same time. My gig tickets are like £18, and my albums £8, so ... it's all relative.
iTunes has been successful but it depends on a user having an Apple product to put the music on after they've paid for it, and an average kid doesn't have money lying about for an iPhone. Streaming sites like Spotify for music and Netflix, which offers a similar service for film and TV, are an interesting idea and growing rapidly, but at present they are still nowhere near popular enough to challenge torrents, filesharing and the attraction of free music.The recording industry has itself to blame here. With the high licensing fees it requires from online services like Pandora and Spotify, these services just can't grow to where they can actually compete. This is holding back the music industry more than it helps it. If people can't get the music they want from legal services, they will go to something else that is culturally accepted even if it is not legal.
We have already considered what an alternate reality would look like if the music industry had actually accepted change and innovated instead of following its current fight-and-impede approach. By sticking with its current approach of fighting the will of fans, the industry has not only left money on the table, but has made itself culturally obsolete. The fans have already moved on from what the record industry is offering to something better. They have built up a culture around filesharing, and that culture has become mainstream.
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Remember that sweet octogenarian lady in Spain who tried to restore a 19th-century fresco "Ecce Homo" and ended up producing something that the BBC's Europe correspondent described as "a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic"? Remember how the poor woman had an anxiety attack as a result of the criticism she received, but that everything worked out fine when her work became an Internet meme, and sightseers started flocking to see it?
It would be fascinating to know where the idea came from: whether somebody suggested to her that she had a "right" to some of the church's money, or whether the sense of entitlement -- in this case for more or less ruining an admittedly minor work of art -- is now so widespread that everyone, everywhere, naturally assumes they ought to get their cut as soon as money is involved. Either way, it's a sad commentary on our times -- and on what a belief in copyright can do to otherwise generous people.
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The French magazine Closer, which published topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge, must hand over the original pictures and pay a 10,000-euro ($13,000) fine each time the images are published again, a French court ruled.Perhaps the judge (Judge Jean-Michel Hayat) spent the past few days enjoying some fine film noir, watching negatives go up in smoke in starkly lit ashtrays as the music rose and screen went soft focus momentarily as things, indeed, appeared to be working out for the troubled heroine. This explanation is as good as any for an order that completely ignores the reality of the situation. The picture is out there [indicates everywhere, but especially the internet] and no amount of fines or orders to produce the "originals" (on what? an SD card?) is putting those breasts back under proper British clothing.
The magazine, owned by the Berlusconi family’s Arnoldo Mondadori Editore Spa (MN), was sued after it printed a series of photos of the royal couple sunbathing on a private French estate. The tabloid was ordered to pay Kate 2,000 euros in expenses and an additional 10,000 euros each day it fails to turn over the original images.
It's not even a problem specific to the internet era. This wouldn't have flown 30 years ago when people had access to both newpapers and copiers. For that matter, this type of order has been outdated since the point photographs could be affixed to paper and distributed to readers/gawkers. You can't simply undo a mass distribution of "unapproved" photos. Not now. Not 30 years ago. Not 100 years ago. The photos are everywhere.
“Clearly, the harm has been done,” said Christopher Mesnooh, an American lawyer working in France for Field Fisher Waterhouse. “Thousands, now tens of thousands of copies, are now in public circulation. A legal decision is a wonderful thing to obtain and the royal couple did exactly what they should have done. But you know the magazine is out there and I suspect most of you have already seen copies of that magazine, so the basic, the initial harm, has been done.”So, it all boils down to making sure the royal family is given some sort of... something for its "troubles." There will likely be more of these utterly disconnected decisions as the royal family may also pursue legal action in Italy and Ireland, not to mention pursuing criminal charges against the photographer. But I suppose it's a misguided (and amusing) effort to be doing something, especially considering the relationship between the royal family and its paparazzi has been anything but pleasant.
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A few years back, we wrote about a fantastic research report that suggested for all of the claims that the song "Happy Birthday" remains covered by copyright, there was a lot of evidence that it was still in the public domain. After all, the music is from the 1800s and the lyrics were published in books starting in 1912. And, of course, as the handy dandy chart notes, works published prior to 1923 aren't supposed to be subject to copyright. But.. it's not always that simple:
Robert Brauneis notes that the lyrics to “Happy Birthday” were published in 1912 in The Beginners’ Book of Songs and again in 1915 in The Golden Book of Favorite Songs. (The music is much older.) Yet according to the current owners of the presumed copyright in “Happy Birthday,” these early publications were unauthorized. They argue that the first authorized publication of the lyrics to “Happy Birthday” occurred in 1935 and copyright runs from that date. Digitizing either the 1912 or 1915 volumes or singing the lyrics to “Happy Birthday” as found in the books would therefore infringe on the copyright first secured in 1935.Yes, you read that right. If you digitized books from 1912, you could infringe on a copyright from 1935. That is not a functional system.
But that's not the only crazy case. Hirtle highlights another example of what he believes may be the oldest work still covered by US copyright... and it's from 1755:
Probably the oldest work still protected by copyright in the U.S. is a letter from John Adams to Nathan Webb written on Sept. 1, 1755. Copyright in the Adams material was transferred to the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) in 1956. In that same year the MHS published a microfilm edition of the correspondence and registered the copyright with the Copyright Office. Copyright was renewed in 1984, which means that copyright in the Adams letter will expire on Jan. 1, 2052, almost 300 years after it was written.There are a number of other crazy examples as well. Take, for example, arguments over whether or not a work is "published" or "unpublished." This can matter, especially for older works, since there were different copyright rules depending on the publishing status of the work. But, the definition of "publication" isn't always clear, especially for pre-1978 works (see the example above). And that can create bizarre examples like the one below from an actual court case:
An allegedly infringed work reportedly has a title page stating that it was published. Furthermore, the defendants also claim that the work was distributed to more than 55,000 people. Nevertheless, the work is registered as an unpublished work with the Copyright Office. This is because the work was never offered to the public; instead, it was only to senior officials and leaders of the Mormon Church.Similarly, he notes that merely broadcasting a TV show wasn't considered "publishing." So TV shows like the first episode of Star Trek don't have their copyright clock start until nearly a dozen years after it was first broadcast, because that's the first time it was "offered for sale" rather than just broadcast.
Reading through all of the examples, it's a great lesson in how screwed up copyright law is today, especially with regards to the public domain -- a sadly neglected part of American culture.
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Or, how about the Russian activists who were shut down after the Russian government used copyright claims to seize their computers?
So how does Mossoff get around that? Simple. If you can't argue the facts, just make up a scenario that works in your favor. He sets up a perfect strawman, insisting that those who argued against SOPA and PIPA claimed that all copyright violates the First Amendment:
The argument that copyright violates the constitutional right to free speech seems to have particular force on the Internet, because, in the words of one federal court decision, "The Internet is a communications medium." Copyright owners seem to squelch this communication: They compel websites to take down infringing videos, music and writings. The music industry successfully sued widely used peer-to-peer services such as Napster and Grokster, and it continues to use automated programs called bots to track what music people download and from what websites. SOPA expanded copyright owners' legal rights to block websites containing infringing content, in effect relegating these websites to digital purgatory. As a law professor stated at a conference over the summer: "Copyright is the engine of censorship."But Mossoff then claims this is crazy talk, because he has bought into the view that copyright is not the monopoly privilege that it is but that it's "property." Of course, that's hogwash. The purpose of "property" is to best allocate scarce resources. "Property" does not make sense either intellectually or economically for things that are not scarce, such as content. Copyright is not a property right, no matter how many times maximalists incorrectly insist it is. However, even if we accept Mossoff's incorrect assertion, he then layers on the ridiculous by claiming that copyright has no impact on speech other than that which is covered by copyright:
Thus, copyright law secures the fruits of creative labors, but only those specific fruits — the value in the specific text, picture or song created by the artist.Okay. So what about all the original content created on the blogs that the government took down using copyright law? Or the speech of those Russian activists? This is where Mossoff appears to have a total blindspot, common to someone in academia with no experience in the real world. Copyright is not used just to protect the rights granted under the Copyright Act. It is used regularly to shut down other expression.
The right to free speech is the right to express one's thoughts without censorship by the government. Copyright does not prohibit anyone from creating their own original novels, songs or artworks. Importantly, copyright does not stop people from thinking, talking or writing about copyrighted works.
Copyright claims took down the official DNC livestream. Bogus copyright claims took down the official Hugo Awards live stream. Bogus copyright claims took down a negative review of a Universal Music album. Questionable copyright claims took down parody commentary by Dan Bull, expressing his opinion on another copyright lawsuit (while the copyright holder left up tons of other versions of the song). Copyright claims were used to suppress an unflattering photo that some rich dude didn't like. A bogus copyright claim was used to take down a totally unrelated news article, after Fox thought it was about a movie which it wasn't.
And that's all just from the past few months. Anyone who insists that copyright has nothing to do with censorship because it only protects the rights established under the Copyright Act seems to have no credibility on the subject.
Mossoff then further expands his thesis by claiming that copyright doesn't violate the First Amendment... because there are some limits on the First Amendment. Of course, that argument makes no sense either. Yes, there are some limits on the First Amendment. That doesn't mean that any restriction on speech is okay under the First Amendment. This is basic logical fallacy territory. Just because there are some exceptions, doesn't mean that all exceptions make sense or are legal -- but Mossoff honestly seems to be making that argument.
If you actually want intelligent and nuanced views on the conflict of the First Amendment and copyright law, rather than the ridiculous claims from Mossoff, I recommend Neil Netanel's Copyright's Paradox or David Lange and Jefferson Powell's No Law. Both books involve careful and detailed analyses of how and where copyright law and the First Amendment come into conflict.
Mossoff just brushes all that off, saying that since both copyright and the First Amendment are in the Constitution, there's no conflict:
In fact, both copyright and the right to free speech are based in the Constitution — in the copyright and patent clause in Article I, Section 8, and in the First Amendment.Of course, that's neither accurate nor "strange." First off, free speech is a right in the Constitution. Copyright is not. It troubles me that a "law professor" would make such an obviously false claim. The Constitution's Article I, Section 8 only grants Congress the right to create a copyright law -- explicitly for the purpose of "promoting the progress of science" (the "useful arts" stuff was about patents). To suggest that the Constitution establishes copyright as a right is simply false.
Strangely, people are now claiming that one part of the Constitution is an unconstitutional violation of another part of the Constitution.
Second, there is nothing "strange" at all about the concerns people have raised about copyright law. Even if we assume that Mossoff's initial suggestion that both come from the Constitution is accurate, what he ignores is just how massively copyright law has changed since it was first created. In 1976, the US completely overhauled its copyright system, making it so pretty much anything new put in a "fixed" form was automatically granted copyright for life plus 50 years (later expanded to 70 years, thanks to Disney and Sonny Bono). To pretend that copyright law we have today couldn't possibly conflict with the First Amendment because we also had copyright law in 1790 is ignoring that copyright law today looks nothing like copyright law in 1790.
Mossoff, ridiculously, acts as if they're basically the same thing.
It really makes you wonder how anyone can take these claims seriously when they're so uninformed. Mossoff is apparently appearing this week at UT Austin for a discussion on free speech and intellectual property. Thankfully, one of the other people appearing at the same event is Neil Netanel, the author of Copyright's Paradox, mentioned above. Mossoff would do well to actually pay attention to what Netanel has to say.
Let's make this simple: is copyright automatically censorship? No. But can it be used for censorship? Absolutely. I don't see how anyone who is even remotely intellectually honest can deny that. Copyright maximalists are free to suggest that the censorship "costs" are minimal or can be minimized. Or they can argue that this is collateral damage that is "worth it" for the supposed benefits provided by copyright law. But to argue that copyright law is entirely unrelated to free speech violations is simply not a supportable position. Yet it's the one Mossoff makes. And for that reason, he has no credibility on the subject.
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But what caught my eye, was a couple sections up from the libel part. It appears that Cybersex is now a crime in the Philippines too. In the section that lists out "content-related offense," number one on the list is:
Cybersex. -- The willful engagement, maintenance, control, or operation, directly or indirectly, of any lascivious exhibition of sexual organs or sexual activity, with the aid of a computer system, for favor or consideration.That wording seems a bit awkward, but it certainly seems to suggest that even willing cybersex is now illegal if it's done "for favor or consideration." People in the Philippines are quite reasonably worried that the language here is quite broad. And what's the punishment? It seems a bit on the harsh side:
Any person found guilty of any of the punishable acts enumerated in Section 4(c)(1) of this Act shall be punished with imprisonment of prision mayor or a fine of at least Two hundred thousand pesos (PhP200,000.00) but not exceeding One million pesos (PhPl,000,000.00) or both.Prision mayor appears to mean at least six years in prison. 200,000 Philipine pesos is about $5,000. So... basically cybersex is a crime in the Philippines that could net you more than six years in jail... and fines of between $5,000 and $25,000.
That seems a bit... harsh.
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Over at Games Brief, a number of game developers were asked about paywalls in games and whether they should be used at all.
Harry Holmwood writes: “A colleague and I downloaded New Star Soccer at the airport and were playing it on a flight back from Germany last week, got hooked, but then hit the ‘hard payment’ point where we had to pay to continue the career. As we were on a plane at that point we couldn’t do the IAP and had to stop playing. Over the weekend I was tempted to pay and play but didn’t bother – the moment was lost, and I suspect now I won’t do it at all.”While most developers were pretty varied in their opinions on this question, the general theme is that putting up walls in front of the consumer and preventing them from playing more is something that should be avoided. Take this comment from Philip Reisberger from Bigpoint.
Are hard paywalls a good idea, or should you always make it possible for players to keep playing?
In general, we’ve seen that it’s most important to have the users playing. Monetization is always to be regarded as consequence of gameplay. There are some really core-style titles where a hard paywall is possible, but I’d regard this rather as an exception than the norm.While it is possible for such hard paywalls to make some money, it would be better to have as many people playing as possible. As soon as a person is no longer able to play, they are less likely to pay into the game. The question then goes to how do you get those people to pay if they can play for free? This is where opinions vary widely.
By allowing a consumer to continuously play, you can provide multiple opportunities for the consumer to evaluate how much they actually value the game they are playing. This is where proper selling of freemium options comes into play. If you have already sold the person on the game itself as something fun to play, then the next step is to sell them on the extras. This can be done by showing them how the core experience can be enhanced by such extras. As Tadhg Kelly of What Games Are explains.
In some cases (Temple Run, Bejewelled Blitz) it’s the same. They basically sell boosters and cheats to make better score runs, and since the core action of the game is so compelling it’s more likely over time that you will buy. Bringing a money-now question into that dynamic is inappropriate for the same reasons as the grind game.The core issue to remember with paywalls is that it is very difficult to convince someone that paying for the ability to keep playing something they have been playing for free is a very tough sell if all they are getting is just more of the same experience. You need to sell them on an expanded experience, one that they wouldn't otherwise get if they were playing for free. Of course, there is no one way to do it. There are a variety of market factors that can determine how and when you go about charging your customer.
Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO of nDreams, sums up this overall market reality.
I’d be very wary about ever saying that a particular model/route is ‘the correct one’ or that you should ‘never’ do something. Every game is different and every platform is different. In PlayStation Home, where we publish most of our games, it’s beginning to appear that ‘paymium’ may be the most commercial route given the size of the audience, their propensity to pay and the ease of generating awareness. But on iOS, being new to the platform, freemium is the only model that makes sense to us currently.This variation in the marketplace would then allow for many different ideas of monetization both good and bad, both successful and unsuccessful. However, putting barriers between the consumer and your goods makes it more difficult for that consumer to buy. Look back at the original question. Because of external circumstances at the time of hitting the paywall, that potential customer was not able to process a transaction. That delay then led him to rethink the idea of purchase and, as far as we know, he has not made a purchase, even though he enjoyed the part of the game he played. Why would you want to limit your potential to make money in such a way?
FYI, I don’t believe the gaming world will end up existing purely of games that you can play forever with continuous loops, return mechanics and daily bonuses. I believe there will always be games that have a beginning and an end and a strong linear storyline. For these kind of games, I’m not convinced that freemium is necessarily the correct approach.
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Techdirt has had many posts pointing out that the huge and vibrant fashion industry is a perfect demonstration that you don't need monopolies to succeed, and that bringing in copyright for clothes and accessories now would be positively harmful. One of the people who's been making that point for years is Kal Raustiala (co-author of this month's Techdirt book club choice, The Knockoff Economy). NPR Books has just posted a short interview with him that succinctly explains why copyright would be a disaster for the fashion industry. Here are a couple of the key points.
For a start, Raustiala explains why copying is so good for the fashion world: fashion relies on trends, and trends rely on copying. So you can think of copying as a turbocharger that spins the fashion cycle faster, so things come into fashion faster, they go out of fashion faster, and that makes fashion designers want to come up with something new because we want something new.
That's the familiar argument that copying helps to drive innovation. But copying does something even more important: it helps define what exactly is fashionable. copying helps condense the market into something that consumers can understand, so people want to follow trends, they want to be able to dress in a way that's in style; they have to understand that.
That is, without copying, the sense of what is fashionable right now would be diminished, leading to a fractured fashion market. By amplifying and clarifying trends, copying also widens the market for the season's current fashions.
Raustiala makes an good point about why it's unusual to apply for design patents -- the obvious "protection" here: it's unusual to do that because, 1) it's very expensive to get a patent, and 2) patents require a standard of novelty and originality that's often hard to reach in the fashion industry, where many things are reworkings of previous things.
That's a recognition that the fashion industry is a kind of commons, with designers continually drawing on and contributing back to that pool of creativity. It means that other fashion houses can then build on those common ideas, which results in more creativity, and more choices for consumers.
Exactly the same kind of borrowing takes place elsewhere, especially in the computer field. But instead of accepting that fact, companies like Apple and Samsung have opted for an all-or-nothing legal strategy that tries to enclose parts of the knowledge commons through the granting of temporary monopolies on ideas and designs. The result is a huge waste of time and money, whose chief outcome is likely to be less consumer choice as models are blocked or withdrawn. The contrast with the world of fashion is painful.
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Techdirt has written about earlier moves by India to block Web sites and censor Twitter accounts. The central concern seems to be that inflammatory online activity might stoke or provoke local outbreaks of violence of the kind seen recently in Assam. Now The Times of India is reporting that the Indian government wants to go further, and actively monitor who's saying what by setting up a new agency: "The agency will have an effective monitoring system, comprising duly tasked and technologically empowered cyber monitoring and surveillance agencies, which can report build-up in time and forewarn government of any malicious use of the internet and social media," said an official. Such a central agency will, however, be set up only after putting in place a legal regime to take care of the issue of individuals' privacy and citizens' freedom of speech/expression.
Although it's good that legal safeguards will be put in place to safeguard privacy and freedom of expression, the devil is in the details: the fact that the Indian government has already shut down Web sites and Twitter accounts suggests that political fears are likely to override concerns about human rights if tensions begin to rise. The same story's quotation of a comment from a recent government meeting on the subject, with its references to "graded response and graded penalty to perpetrators", does not augur well: "This will introduce predictability with regard to what kind of content is liable to be regulated and for how long, the structure and process for such regulation, proactive dissemination of information to counter false propaganda as well as a system of graded response and graded penalty to perpetrators," the minutes of the meeting said.
Meanwhile, Rebecca MacKinnon points us to news on the Net Prophet blog that Kyrgyzstan also wants to ramp up its censorship: The only parliamentarian republic in Central Asia -- Kyrgyzstan -- has become the scene of a growing attack on Internet freedom. In the beginning of September, parliamentarians and security services proposed two new measures which, according to opinion leaders and experts, would increase censorship in an already restricted Internet landscape.
The reason -- of course -- is to "protect the children": Online media and television often contain information accompanied by scenes of violence, pornography, and the promotion of drugs. That can affect the outlook of a child and lead to disastrous consequences. Such rules have been in place for a long time in other countries and have been known to work efficiently.
In particular, the Kyrgyz proposal seems modelled on the Russian approach, as the Net Prophet story notes: the information portal Kloop cites human-rights activists emphasizing the similarities between the current law and the one passed a few weeks ago in Russia. The activists have found many similarities between the two laws.
This is the law that Techdirt reported on back in July. What this underlines is the way that bad laws have a habit of spreading, as successive countries bring in similar laws. That's not least because, rather than being able to take the moral high ground by offering clear examples of how to preserve freedom of speech on the Internet, Western countries are now widely perceived as hypocritical when it comes to censorship.
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It's interesting to see that in a high profile case that the ITC is handling, between Intel and X2Y Attentuators LLC -- which describes itself as "an intellectual property company" -- various members of Congress are so worried about the possibility of an injunction issued against Intel, that they've specifically sent a letter to the ITC urging it to "consider the broader public interest" before making a decision. Two letters were sent -- one from the two Senators and all five House reps from Oregon, and another from the two Senators and all eight House reps from Arizona -- telling the ITC that a ruling against Intel would have a "detrimental effect" on the workforce and such an injunction could "discourage" US production and "could do more harm than good with respect to the public interest."
While they're right, this does seem like blatant pandering to constituents. Intel has very large presences in both states (16,000 employees in Oregon and 11,000 in Arizona). However, as the National Law Journal article linked above notes, this is becoming pretty standard, any time a large tech company faces an injunction from the ITC. Its Congressional reps get together and send the ITC a letter. While I agree that these injunctions can do serious harm and the economy, and innovation is much better without the ITC issuing them, it's troubling to me that these elected officials are resorting to pressuring the ITC, rather than doing what they should: recognizing this is just one small symptom of a truly broken patent system. Instead of trying to pressure that one symptom, why not focus on actually fixing the problems of the patent system? If they want a starting point, we've got some ideas.
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- DARPA is funding the "100 Year Starship Initiative" which aims to make long-distance space travel possible within the next century. The initiative will focus on identifying and driving advancements in the technologies needed for interstellar flight, as well as using them to improve the quality of life on Earth. [url]
- According to an estimate of how much energy would be needed to make interstellar travel possible, it will be at least another 200 years before humans will have enough to trek to the stars. For example, a mission to send 500 people on a one-way trip into space would require 1018 Joules of energy for rocket propulsion. In comparison, a shuttle launch requires 1013 Joules of energy. [url]
- NASA's Glenn Research Center has compiled a list of some ideas for interstellar travel that are based on scientific knowledge that exists today. To make interstellar travel practical, we'll need to be able to control gravitational/inertial forces, travel faster than light, find ways to harness the energy in the vacuum of space, etc. [url]
- Icarus Interstellar Inc. is working on the concept of using powerful lasers to generate antimatter from the vacuum of space. The large amount of energy produced through matter-antimatter annihilation could then be used for interstellar propulsion. [url]
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It's another one of those huge Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction.Jay Rosen helpfully points out that the peak was the same year that blogging software came on the scene. Though, I'm doubtful that's the "cause" here. You could probably make a stronger argument that the introduction of Craigslist, which really came on the scene in San Francisco in the late 90s before spreading elsewhere in 2000, contributed to this, as did tons of other online services.
But, here's the thing: for years we keep hearing about how the "decline" of the newspaper industry is supposedly happening because they put their papers online for free. But this chart certainly suggests a very different story. As we've said for a while, the real problem wasn't "free" but the newspapers failure to innovate. Going free online, if anything, should have increased ad revenue, not decreased it, since it would have increased inventory (though potentially decreased the prices).
We've pointed out for many years that the "real" business of newspapers was never "news," but collecting together a community and then selling their attention. The problem that newspapers came up against wasn't that they were suddenly giving out content online for free, but that there were very, very quickly millions of other "communities" that people could join online, such that the community of folks reading the newspaper started to go down, and with it, the attention went away. Thus, advertising in a newspaper became a lot less valuable. In fact, it became even more pronounced because, at best, newspaper advertising was targeted around (a) the general location where the newspaper was published and (b) perhaps the section of the newspaper in which the ad was placed. But, again, the internet changed the equation there, where you could start to target the attention of various communities based on a variety of other factors, some of which were seen to be much more lucrative than a crapshoot towards "all people in this city."
Making matters even worse, as various online communities focused on providing more "community" oriented features and content, newspapers seemed to go in the other direction. In part, this was because they kept insisting they were in the business of providing news, not in the business of aggregating a community's attention. So they took the somewhat elitist view that the community didn't matter much -- often to the point of acting in almost insulting ways towards the community. Things like paywalls, overly intrusive advertising, limited community functionality and the like just made newspapers less and less relevant. And when you're less and less relevant to a community, their attention goes elsewhere... and with it, advertising revenue.
And, in fact, it does not appear that the money that used to be spent on newspaper ads went away. While there are a number of different sources that seek to calculate total ad revenue over time, here's a chart showing overall US ad revenue from 1919 up to 2007, in which you see that it has a pretty consistent upward trend (admittedly, this is not corrected for inflation). That same chart also shows advertising as a percentage of GDP... and that has been pretty consistently stuck between 2.0% and 2.5% since the early 1980s. Various other metrics seem to show something similar. US advertising, as a whole, continued to generally expand over the past decade and a half while newspaper advertising collapsed. Looking over some more data, it looks like the big winners since 1998 were, of course, the internet, direct mail, cable TV and "out of home" advertising. Also "miscellaneous."
In other words, the newspapers suddenly faced a lot more competition for ad dollars, and they did nothing to convince the market to stick with them. So, the market went elsewhere.
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It's election season, a time when man's (and more recently, woman's) thoughts turn towards shutting off the TV, radio and phone until mid-November. But! Things must be voted on, including such controversial issues as legalizing medical marijuana and authorizing dispensaries. As an opponent of weed-based medicines, you vow to fight this with every ounce/gram of your being. You set your plan in action.
1. Pick a name for your committee. ("No on Question 3")
2. Pick out a suitable URL ("votenoonquestion3.org")
3. Get your committee and its pertinent information added to the official voters' guide (both print and online.)
4. Register URL.
5. Become aghast.
Can anyone point out where Vote No on Question 3 went wrong? Here are some visual aids, taken from votenoonquestion3.org:
You see, the internet is like magic. And like most magic, it can be used for entertainment purposes. All the do-gooding in the world doesn't amount to much if you forget to register your URL. While you're busy enjoying that "new ink" smell of freshly printed Voter's Guides, someone quicker on the draw is undermining your "marijuana is bad" propaganda proselytizing information with hilariously over-the-top headlines.
The good news is that the online voters' guide sports the corrected URL: mavotenoonquestion3.com
The bad news is that the paper version will carry the old URL permanently. Of course, very few people are willing to type in a URL by hand, but as news of this blunder spreads, the fake site with the real URL will be receiving much more attention, voters' guide correction or no.
Here's the official reaction from No on Question 3 spokesman, Kevin Sabet:
"It's funny and upsetting, I guess, at the same time."Yeah. Largely the first part. And to think, the committee can't even blame a late afternoon smokeout for the mental slip.
This statement, however, seems both more on point and more disingenuous:
The group sent out a press release saying proponents of medical marijuana were tampering with the democratic process through “underhanded efforts.”Sabet admits the committee made a mistake and yet, the press release attempts to paint No on Question 3 as the victim of villainous pot smokers rather than treating it like the self-inflicted wound it is.
Oh, and here's more bad news for the "No" side:
The Globe notes that the No on Question 3 campaign has managed to collect all of $600 so far, compared to the $1 million or so that supporters of the initiative have received from Peter Lewis, a longtime patron of drug policy reform.Maybe it's time to admit your fears of a weed-loaded America are overblown, especially when you've just been outmaneuvered (and outspent) by a bunch of stoners.
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You can go check out the TVNews Search & Borrow site right now. The search feature is pretty cool, combing through closed captions to find the relevant content. So it's neat to do a quick search on topics of interest and see what they turn up. Of course, there are still a few kinks to work out. Out of curiosity, I did a search on SOPA, and got back some relevant news stories (including the Jon Stewart story about blackout day. But... I also got a bunch of Spanish-language programs about soup. Even when I limited the language to English. I assume those things will get better over time. Each clip is split into 30 second increments, so it's not like you're automatically getting the full broadcast, though you can piece together the clips.
And it's not just a "historical" archive. They're going to continue to add to it, with new clips being available 24-hours after they air.
Of course, all of this made me wonder about the copyright issues involved. The NY Times had this somewhat cryptic statement:
The act of copying all this news material is protected under a federal copyright agreement signed in 1976. That was in reaction to a challenge to a news assembly project started by Vanderbilt University in 1968.I was curious about that, and a few people pointed me to 17 USC 108 (f)(3), which notes that:
nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the reproduction by lending of a limited number of copies and excerpts by a library or archives of an audiovisual news program subject to [a few other clauses concerning archives]...This is based on the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, which the Internet Archive directly calls out in its own announcement as being the inspiration for this new project. Inspiration... and legal helper.
Here's a bit of historical perspective from Historians.org:
Indeed, in the early days of the archive, CBS had sued for copyright infringement, claiming that broadcasts could not be recorded without the permission of the networks. At the time of the lawsuit, Congress was in the process of revising the copyright law. Congress recognized the growing importance and influence of television media on American culture, thought, and politics, and felt that news broadcasts should have special protection under the copyright law, to allow the American people access to their own history. Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee introduced an amendment to the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act to give universities and archives the right to record news broadcasts off-air and to make a limited number of copies for research purposes. Following the enactment of the new law with this provision, CBS and Vanderbilt mutually withdrew from the lawsuit.But does that really make the Internet Archive legal? I'm not so sure the TV guys are going to see it that way. That same report at Historians.org notes that Vanderbilt is not allowed to share nearly all of its collection online -- and it also notes that "The advent of the Internet and the consequent possibility of making digital copies and lending them online have, however, raised new legal problems that need to be resolved." I would imagine that a key one among them is whether or not the Internet Archives' setup qualifies as "lending a limited number of copies."
One would hope that an informed court would recognize that this fits with the intent of Congress in creating this kind of exception, though I fear that the networks are likely to fight pretty hard on this one, even as it seems like this service could really benefit them as well as others, rather than really take away from anything they do.
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Well this is bizarre. Jamie Love from KEI was over at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a meeting about "global negotiations on intellectual property and access to medicine." The meeting itself was held in a room that it uses for the USPTO's Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA), and there is free WiFi for people to use. Love tried to log onto his own website... and found that it was being blocked as a "political/activist group."
Access Denied (content_filter_denied)Love then checked a bunch of other sites... and noticed a rather distressing pattern. For public interest groups who advocate that the existing copyright/patent system is broken, the websites were all blocked. ACLU, EFF, Public Knowledge, Public Citizen, CDT... all blocked. However, if you're a lobbyist for maximalism? No problem! MPAA, RIAA, IIPA, IPI, PHRMA, BSA... come on through. They do allow Creative Commons. Thankfully (for us, at least), they don't seem to block blogs that talk about this stuff. Techdirt is allowed, as are things like BoingBoing, Groklaw and Larry Lessig and Michael Geist's blogs. Though, oddly, a bunch of political sites (DailyKos, TPM, RedState, Rush Limgaugh's site) are blocked.
Your request was denied because this URL contains content that is categorized as: "Political/Activist Groups" which is blocked by USPTO policy. If you believe the categorization is inaccurate, please contact the USPTO Service Desk and request a manual review of the URL.
For assistance, contact USPTO OCIO IT Service Desk. (io-proxy4)
It may be an "over active" filter -- but it does seem particularly disturbing that all those groups who fight for the public's rights on the very issues the USPTO is dealing with on a regular basis have their sites completely blocked.
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The DAs office, it appears, is literally selling the use of their stationary. In exchange for letting debt collectors appear both a lot more official and for falsely suggesting that law enforcement is pursuing criminal action, the debt collectors "sell" a "financial accountability" class, from which some of the proceeds get kicked back to the DAs' offices.
The practice, which has spread to more than 300 district attorneys’ offices in recent years, shocked Angela Yartz when she was threatened with conviction over a $47.95 check to Walmart. A single mother in San Mateo, Calif., Ms. Yartz said she learned the check had bounced only when she opened a letter in February, signed by the Alameda County district attorney, informing her that unless she paid $280.05 — including $180 for a “financial accountability” class — she could be jailed for up to one year.The NYT includes images of some of the documents in question, and they really do look quite official, despite the fact that the DA's office usually is not even aware of the particulars of anyone's case, and is unlikely to pursue any sort of law enforcement activity.
What's really ridiculous is to see various DAs offices defend this kind of thing.
“I view it as quite a win-win,” said Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger. “You aren’t criminalizing someone who shouldn’t have a criminal record, and you are getting the merchant his money back.”Scott Greenfield's response to this ridiculous claim is dead on:'
Check bouncers should be held accountable. But only in a way that the law provides, after the people in whom we repose trust and responsibility ascertain that a crime has been committed, and after the accused has been afforded the opportunity of a full and fair hearing before a neutral magistrate. Whether the merchants deserve to get money back or not is the end result, not the starting point. It's a burden to do things right? 'Tough nuggies. That's why they pay you the big bucks.He similarly finds offensive the claim from another (former) DA in the article that these shakedown programs are fair because actually having law enforcement would "overburden the court system or the resources of the district attorneys." Again, Greenfield points out that you don't get to avoid due process just because it's a hassle:
After all, who would want to "overburden the court system or the resources of district attorneys" by expecting them to do their jobs? Who would want courts and prosecutors to afford citizens due process? Instead, let's defer to the excellent judgment and trustworthiness of businesses and debt collectors. They would never lie. They would never get it wrong.We've talked a lot about problems with forms of "crony capitalism" where businesses have undue power over government, and it happens at pretty much every level of government these days. But, at the very least, we shouldn't just be handing over the power of law enforcement to private parties. Law enforcement agencies are already prone to abuse. Giving it to private, for-profit companies? You're just asking for serious trouble.
Update: Liberty McAteer points out that the offices doing this likely are violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) in a very, very big way... Update 2: Some more comments point out that there appear to be direct exemptions in the FDCPA for this kind of thing. Doesn't make it right, but probably not illegal under the act.
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Geek.com
Remember the days when Lego was only good for killing a few hours on a rainy childhood day? There is no doubt that the Lego company is a marvel and a case study for how to grow and revolutionize a business. Now it’s at a point where it takes a lot for a new Lego [...]
Ever wanted to see a giraffe straddle a motorbike, fire an RPG, or push cars so they go flying off into the distance? I thought so. Perhaps those were the same reasons why someone made this Grand Theft Auto 4 giraffe mod. The five and a half minute video above shows the giraffe shoving cars [...]
If you sometimes look at your phone and just wish it was monstrously gigantic, Samsung has just the thing for you. After an international debut, the Galaxy Note II is finally official for the top five US carriers. The Note Android phones have proven hugely popular with a wide range of users, so maybe Steve [...]
Every geek who knows what a 3D printer is looks forward to the day when putting one of these gadgets in the home is both cost appropriate and quality assured. 3D printers are unbelievably cool, and in the right hands there’s a practically unlimited number of uses for such a creative device. At the end [...]
Long gone are the days of gaming laptops being relegated to huge space heating blocks that were portable only in the loosest of terms. With advancements in mobile chips, manufacturers have been able to use higher performance chips that use less power and thus fit more ideally into smaller systems. Dell’s Alienware M14x starts with [...]
As we all know, Nintendo’s new console the Wii U is launching on November 18th with a host of games available and the pre-orders for it are already selling out everywhere. It’s not all good news for Nintendo fans, though. Nintendo has announced they won’t be selling the console’s unique GamePad separately until next year at [...]
If you consider yourself a fan of Windows 8 and are hoping that first-generation convertibles and tablets will be a smashing success, then you’re probably already nervous following the leaked Asus pricing that appeared this week. Even worse, pricing for Acer’s Iconia Tab W510 and W700 in New Zealand has now leaked, too — and [...]
Train buffs, behold. One of the most unique and captivating PC cases ever to hit the market has been introduced, and it’ss shaped like an old-fashion train. It isn’t just a uniquely crafted shape, though. This baby can also move up and down a specialized railroad track, and shoot steam out of the front of [...]
The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic bit of kit out the box, offering a complete PC for just $35. But of course, as soon as you start using it you would like it to go a bit faster than the stock 700MHz clock frequency, and then you start editing the config.txt and discover you can [...]
With Windows Phone 8 finally in the hands of OEMs, these companies are able to really put their best foot forward in releasing new Windows Phone devices. WP 7 was limiting in terms of hardware, so there was less creative ability there. HTC’s Peter Chou took to the stage today and announced their new Windows [...]
Have you heard? There's a 3D printing revolution going on. Well, maybe it would be more appropriate to say that it's just getting underway. Devices like the MakerBot aim to put a small, affordable printer in your home that can make any 3D object you please. Right now these units are limited to plastic, and [...]
Sony has announced that their new mobile service, PlayStation Mobile, will be available on October 3rd. PlayStation Mobile was originally known as PlayStation Suite and has been talked about for a number of years now, but finally it’s becoming a reality and it’s Sony’s very own way of competing with the mobile gaming market. On [...]
There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t come across some new trinket or toy that appeals to one aspect of my personal geekdom, to say nothing of the things I see that would undoubtedly appeal to other people. Companies are making bacon flavored everything, comic book characters are mainstream, and video games [...]
When Apple introduced the iPhone 5 last week it decided to stick with the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB storage options. That may be due to consumers not needing that much portable storage in a phone yet, or because of a lack of 128GB NAND chips being available in a package small enough to fit in [...]
You might have been disappointed to learn that Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HD tablets were shipping with a locked bootloader, but you can rest easy now. The Android developer community has once again come to the rescue, delivering instructions for a relatively pain-free rooting process that will liberate your Kindle Fire HD 7 from Amazon’s [...]
The first smartphones running Mozilla’s Firefox OS are due to arrive some time in the next several months, and it looks like Chinese handset giant ZTE could be the first company to ship a device. Several carriers have already pledged their support for Firefox OS, including Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, and Telenor [...]
Motorola caught more than a few people by surprise when they announced not one, but six Droid Razr phones are on their way to Verizon Wireless before Christmas. While we know the “Developer Edition” variants of these devices will come with an unlockable bootloader and several unfriendly warnings, and the Razr HD and Razr MAXX [...]
The display isn’t the only thing that’s gotten larger on the iPhone 5: according to a new report from IHS iSuppli, the company’s profit margin may have gotten a healthy bump, too. iSuppli says that the bill of materials for a 16GB iPhone 5 adds up to just $199 — which increases to $207 when [...]
Apple says that it took three long years to research and design its new earbuds, dubbed the Apple EarPods. These earbuds have a unique cone-shaped design, and Apple promises improved sound and durability. As with all things electronic, iFixit has gotten its hands (and spudgers) onto the EarPods for a teardown. The assortment of tools [...]
Nintendo has revealed the full list of titles that will actually be available for purchase when the Wii U goes on sale on November 18. Previously, the company had provided a slate of around 50 games that would be available between November and March, but it held off on confirming actual launch day titles. One [...]
NewsFactor Network
HTC and Microsoft called the devices the "first signature Windows phones."
HTC's Windows Phone 8X and Windows Phone 8S each feature the Windows Live Tiles customizable home screen as well as Beats Audio and Gorilla Glass. The 8X's HD-resolution super LCD 2 screen is 4.3 inches, while the 8S is 4 inches. They ship in November and will be available in the U.S. through AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. No price was announced for either device, however.
"We've been inspired by Windows Phone 8 to create new smartphones that give the platform the iconic design and personality it deserves," said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, in a statement.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the collaboration with the Taiwanese handset maker was "a big milestone" for both companies, adding, "I'm thrilled to take our longstanding partnership to the next level."
The newcomers arrive during a busy month of hardware releases, including last week's iPhone 5 release from Apple and offerings from Samsung, Motorola and Nokia.
"In terms of hardware experiences the devices from Nokia and HTC are on par and in some cases exceed the Android and iPhone rivals, and will compete well compared to the same period last year," said analyst Neil Shah of Strategy Analytics.
In terms of the software user experience, however, the Windows Phone 8 ecosystem has yet to be fully unveiled in order to cement its place as a credible "third ecosystem" behind the market-leading kings, Shah told us.
"In the short-term it's going to be dominated by the Android-iOS duopoly, but [the] upcoming abundant Windows Phone 8 feature sets, growing app ecosystem and multi-device connected experience should satisfy...
Available as a free upgrade, iOS runs on iPhone 3GS and above, iPad 2 and above, and fourth generation iPod Touches and above. It comes pre-installed on the new iPhone 5 and the new, fifth-generation iPod Touch.
iOS 6 had been demonstrated at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in June. New features, of which there are over 200, include Passbook. This app collects all tickets, coupons, and discount cards in a single location. When one arrives at the airport, for instance, a device's GPS tells the boarding pass to load on-screen automatically.
YouTube, owned by Google, is not pre-installed in the new iOS, but is available as a download from the App Store. This is generally seen as part of Apple's continuing disengagement with Google, most prominently by Apple's replacement of the Google Maps app with its own version. Apple contends that Google had been updating the Android version of Maps, but not the iOS one. For instance, the iPhone version of Google Maps doesn't have turn-by-turn directions or vector-based images, both of which are present on Android.
Siri now has the ability to open apps by voice command, which it will do automatically in response to a variety of requests. For instance, a user can voice-command Siri, the intelligent voice agent, to provide directions somewhere, and the app will boot up and show the desired navigational information.
Siri is also getting more cultured. She can understand questions about movies, such as finding the director of a given film, about scores in sports events, or about finding the closest restaurant of a given type. In most such...
The new product line includes: the PowerEdge C-Series C8220 compute sled, which offers a blend of compute power and density; the PowerEdge C8220X/GPU sled, which increases overall performance and compute/memory density per rack and allows the use of GPUs and other accelerators; and the PowerEdge C8000XD storage sled, which lets IT mix SATA, SAS and SSD storage resources.
Forrest Norrod, vice president and general manager of Server Solutions at Dell, said the company is constantly working to address the market's evolving needs for solutions that deliver the ultimate in performance for their heaviest workloads, while saving on space, energy and total cost of ownership. The PowerEdge C8000 Series is Dell's latest answer.
"The C8000 Series means to expand Dell's leadership position by using highly configurable, flexibly deployable solutions to widen the pool of hyperscale use cases and potential customers," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told us.
"Along with typical high-performance computing and Web 2.0 and hosting applications, the C8000 Series can also support both parallel processing-intensive scientific visualization workloads and the high volume storage demands of Big Data applications."
King noted that the new systems also take advantage of Dell's work in fresh-air cooling. The C8000 Series solutions can be deployed without costly cooling upgrades and placed in nontraditional settings, including Dell's innovative Modula Data Center infrastructures.
That, King said, means that Dell's C8000 Series is likely to find fans among a variety of organizations, including new and even smaller companies investigating the hyperscale market. But the new Dell systems should also pique the...
The two new services, announced at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference taking place in San Francisco, will bring to nine the major services available on the Salesforce platform. The others are Force.com, Heroku, Site.com, Database.com, Chatter, Chatter Communities, and AppExchange.
Salesforce said that Identity addresses the explosion of enterprise apps and multiple devices, which has made managing access, identity, and security more difficult for IT, and more cumbersome for users juggling multiple log-ons.
To deal with this many-nations situation, Identity provides a social identity solution that Salesforce compares to Facebook's single sign-on to sites that support its framework. Identity offers single sign-on that can be pre-integrated across apps, so multiple apps can be utilized without multiple user names, passwords and log-ons.
By using Identity with Chatter, the company said, apps across multiple platforms can push information to users in a single feed. For IT administrators, Identity provides centralized identity and access management, as well as central management of apps and users.
Charles King, an analyst with industry research firm Pund-IT, said there has been a recognition in the last 12 to 18 months that single sign-on, once considered a nice-to-have in businesses, is becoming "more of a necessity" because of the "multiplicity of apps, devices and work scenarios."
He noted that some vendors, such as VMware, are choosing to address this problem through the creation of a "virtualized shell" that is deployed to any device, so that "anything can run on anything" through the shell.
Touch addresses another multiplicity headache -- developing custom apps that need to run on many devices in...
Some are comparing it with switches from nimble new competitor Arista Networks, as well as the more well-established Juniper Networks. Arista launched in 2008 and, perhaps not coincidentally, is also in the process of announcing a new series of network switches today, the 7150 Series, using its "software defined networking" approach.
For its part, the Nexus 3548 is designed for high-performance computing environments, like high-performance financial trading and data centers that handle heavy-duty "Big Data."
Cisco says the 3548 boasts network-access performance as low as 190 nanoseconds. That's an important advance for high-performance trading markets, where getting and acting on real-time equities, options and other financial market information nanoseconds faster than competitors may be worth millions of dollars.
"Our members expect to connect using high performing and reliable infrastructure for real-time trading and market data," said Nigel Harold, head of business development technology at the London Stock Exchange. "The new Algo Boost ASIC technology that will be available in the Cisco Nexus 3548 switch offers ultra-low latency and unique features that can increase our visibility across the network and further boost reliability for our customers."
Globally interconnected financial markets have elevated the demands on trading networks, making visibility and control equally critical to performance. Proactive management of market volatility, granular real-time monitoring, and precision timing accuracy of trade events give trading participants greater control and visibility at peak opportunity times across the globe. Cisco says its Nexus 3548 with Algo Boost was designed specifically to provide those capabilities.
A Precision Time Protocol, for...
Redmond on late Monday posted a security advisory urging users to download the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit if they are using IE version 6 through 9. IE 10, which is set to debut with the new Windows 8 operating system, is not affected.
"Microsoft is aware of targeted attacks that attempt to exploit this vulnerability. A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated," Microsoft said in its advisory.
"The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer. An attacker could host a specially crafted Web site that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the Web site."
Paul Roberts, a security analyst at Sophos, said the gang behind the recent Java zero-day attacks apparently hasn't packed up for the season. Roberts points to analysis from AlienVault that suggests a zero day is being used in attacks that install the Poison Ivy Trojan.
Meanwhile, French security Web site ZATAZ.com reveals the exploit was discovered when analyzing a batch of files hosted on one of the servers the Nitro gang used to distribute attacks that exploited the Java vulnerability.
After running one of the sample files on a fully patched Windows XP SP3 system with an up-to-date version of Adobe Flash, ZATAZ co-founder Eric Romang "was surprised to find that the files loaded malicious software to his fully patched XP system," Roberts said.
"Further analysis...
The price was $22.5 million, or $1.45 a share. Ditech's Voice Quality Assurance technology and PhoneTag voice mail-to-text services will be incorporated into Nuance's portfolio. Ditech has been struggling to regain its footing in the evolving voice market. For the quarter ending July 31, Ditech's revenues were $3.5 million, down from $5.6 million in the previous quarter and from $3.7 million in the same quarter in 2011.
The acquisition will allow Nuance to rapidly add features to its products in this fast-moving market at the intersection of voice communications, voice mail, text, and multimedia messaging. The San Jose, Calif.-based Ditech provides advanced voice processing solutions for carriers, and for human speech-related products for enterprises and consumers.
Nuance said Ditech's PhoneTag service will expand its current Dragon Voice-to-Text Services by adding customers and complementary technology. Ditech's PhoneTag voice-to-text provides a carrier-grade solution that includes a fully automated service, a manual service, and a hybrid service, either on-premises or hosted. Applications for voice-to-text include visual voice mail, voice notes, live-conference-call transcription, post-conference-call transcription, and call-recording transcription.
John Pollard, vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile's Voice-to-Text Services, said in a statement that the acquisition of Ditech Networks' voice technologies will help his company continue its drive for next-generation services, as it takes advantage of "the revolution in voice recognition."
Ditech's Voice Quality Assurance technology enhances voice transmissions, using a suite of algorithms that dynamically adapt to changing call conditions in order to improve voice clarity. The technology...
Destined for initial deployment in selected European and Latin American markets beginning in October, the RAZR i smartphone incorporates a 2.0-gigahertz Intel Atom processor capable of extending battery life by up to 40 percent in comparison with Apple's iPhone 4S, according to Google's Motorola Mobility business division.
The power of having Intel Inside means that users will receive an instant-launch 8-megapixel camera that doubles as an HD camcorder featuring full 1080p resolution. According to Juli Burda, a spokeswoman for Motorola Mobility, the mobile device's high-resolution rear-facing camera also can load in less than a second.
"Just use the dedicated camera key so you get the shot you want," Burda wrote in a blog.
When there's action involved, a multi-shot mode enables users to snap 10 pictures in less than a second, Burda said.
"And with the illuminated sensor located on the back and high dynamic range capabilities, you'll get a great shot, even in challenging lighting conditions," Burda said.
Another advantage of having Intel Inside is that Web pages load blazingly fast, said Motorola Mobility Senior Vice President Jim Wicks. "RAZR i delivers just that when you put an Intel-fast processor in a beautifully designed phone," Wicks said Tuesday.
Sporting a thickness of just one-third of an inch and measuring 4.82x2.4 inches, the new RAZR i smartphone is slated to ship with Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich. It also will be upgradable to the next Android version...
Organizations are driven to outsource by several motivators:
* Shifting staff focus from processing/administrative activities to more strategic functions, using the organizational knowledge and experience of staff to its best advantage
* Accessing a higher level of skill/competency on an as-needed basis
* Creating efficiencies and increasing productivity
* Obtaining greater accuracy
* Creating a higher level of compliance
* Saving money
The right outsourcing arrangement can deliver the results listed above if the organization engages in a careful and thoughtful organization-wide planning process. This planning process will help you decide whether outsourcing is right for you, and it is the platform that organizations use to determine which activities to outsource and the outcomes desired.
Let's take a look at a typical internal planning process for an organization that is considering using an outsourced service provider.
1. Set organizational goals for the outsourcing process, and engage in an internal dialogue to ensure consensus on these goals.
2. Perform a cost/benefit analysis to help determine whether outsourcing will produce the economic results that the organization potentially desires. This initial cost/benefit analysis will identify the areas of opportunity and the costs that drive those activities.
3. Research how others in your industry have approached outsourcing. Find out what their experience has been and the benefits and potential pitfalls your colleagues have experienced.
4. Establish a realistic timeline for the activities necessary to identify and set up an outsourcing arrangement. Assume that things will take longer than you expect.
5. Identify potential vendors that are providing the services you require and that may have experience in your industry.
6. Prepare your request for proposal that identifies your goals in seeking an outsourcing partner; outline the services...
Now, after a year on the job, HP CEO Meg Whitman is looking at the PC division again. But she's not planning on selling off the division, rather, she's trying to overhaul its style. And she plans to have something to show the world in time for the holiday shopping season.
"I don't think we kept up with the innovation," Whitman told The Wall Street Journal. "The whole market has moved to something that is more beautiful."
HP posted a record loss and declining sales in its third-quarter financial results and the PC revenues were part of the problem. PC revenues were down 10 percent. Despite the backsliding, Whitman is nevertheless targeting Apple with new designs she hopes will sell high volumes and reverse the negative trend.
"Apple taught us that design really matters," Whitman told the Journal. "I think we've made a lot of progress."
This isn't the first move Whitman has made with the PC division. In March, she combined the Personal Systems Group with the Imaging and Printing Group to rationalize the company's go-to-market strategy, branding, supply chain and customer support and lead to a stronger customer experience and drive innovation.
Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, said HP is in the middle of a perfect storm -- and one aspect of that storm is the obvious disruption that continues in the personal commuting space.
"There is tendency among some people to place most of the responsibility for that disruption on Apple. I don't think I'd go quite that far," King said, noting there is a genuine transformation in the way people are approaching computing, leaning heavily toward mobility and...
The report, the annual edition of the American Customer Satisfaction Index or ACSI, said that customer satisfaction with personal computers is at an all time high -- 80 on a 0-to-100 scale. ACSI interviews about 70,000 customers for its annual report, which also investigates satisfaction with other consumer equipment, such as TVs and dishwashers.
The score of 80 for PCs is 2.6 percent higher than the previous high point of 78 in both 2010 and 2011. ACSI said that the PC category includes tablets along with desktops and laptops, because when customers were asked about PCs, they often included tablets in their responses.
Claes Fornell, ACSI founder, noted in a statement that "the recent stall in demand for desktop PCs comes in conjunction with a surge of interest in small, mobile computers" that are ultrathin or lightweight. He added that the increase in this year's satisfaction score for PCs "is driven, in part, by the higher levels of customer satisfaction that tablets enjoy over desktops and laptops." As tablets become even more popular and increase their market share, Fornell said, overall PC satisfaction is expected to continue rising.
On an individual maker basis, satisfaction with Apple's desktops, laptops and iPad slipped 1 percent to 86, although this is still five to nine percentage points higher than most of its competitors.
Dell's customer satisfaction increased 5 percent to 81, but, as the company increasingly focuses on business markets, its share of the consumer market is shrinking. ACSI said this pattern -- more satisfaction, smaller market share -- was also found for other major Windows machine-makers.
Hewlett-Packard, for instance, notched up 1 percent to 79, while...
Among them is Line, which has grown to 60 million users, mostly in Asia including at least 29 million in Japan. Its developer estimates the number of users will reach 100 million by the end of this year. Also popular is Kakao Talk with 60 million users, more than half in South Korea where it originates. Other successful messengers are Nimbuzz made by an India-based firm which has amassed 100 million users including 31 million in Asia, and WeChat by China-based Tencent, which is nearing 200 million users.
The rapid growth of such applications underlines that people are increasingly going online using mobile phones and other wireless devices. It is a trend that has proved problematic for the world's most popular social networking site. Facebook has lost more than $50 billion of its market value since its initial public offering largely due to doubts about its ability to successfully insert advertising into the mobile version that a large and growing number of its 955 million users access from smartphones.
"Japan, Korea and to a lesser extent China are leading the way in terms of mobile messaging-centric apps that move into diverse and potentially very profitable new service areas like gaming, affiliate marketing, next-generation emoticons," said analyst Mark Ranson at research firm Ovum. "Offering a free, high quality messaging service is a good way of building a large and loyal user base which can later be introduced to more readily monetizeable services."
Instant messaging, also known as IM, was first popularized on desktop computers...
LG said Tuesday that the Optimus G will go on sale in Japan next month and in the U.S. in November. That would put LG's new phone, which costs $894 without subsidies from operators in South Korea, in competition with Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy Note II smartphones during the fall and the winter holidays.
Previous Optimus smartphones have failed to make a mark in the fastest-growing segment of the mobile phone market. LG's mobile division posted losses of nearly 1 trillion won ($895 million) in 2010 and 2011 combined.
LG's mobile chief said the company hopes the G smartphone will help accelerate the division's turnaround.
"The Optimus G is our flagship phone with a competitive edge," Park Jong-seok, LG's mobile business president, told reporters at a media event. "We are trying to make phones differentiated from our rivals."
LG Electronics Inc. was the world's third-largest handset maker before being overtaken by Apple in the high-end market and China-based ZTE Corp. in the low-end.
Analysts said LG was focused on making handsets primarily for voice calls and text messaging, which delayed its response when Apple's iPhone took the mobile market by storm.
The Seoul-based company has reduced its reliance on rudimentary phones to bank on advanced gadgets using Google's Android operating system. But its efforts have not paid off so far. LG's mobile communications division reported an operating loss of 57 billion won in the second quarter.
International Data Corporation puts LG at No. 5 among global mobile-phone makers after Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Apple and ZTE in the three months ending in June.
As LG's struggles with mobile phones continue, various affiliates at LG Group, a major industrial group in...
In an appearance on the Fox Business Network, Whitman said that the company is developing a new phone to ensure it can get mobile devices into the hands of consumers who use smartphones as their sole computing device, especially in foreign countries.
"We have to ultimately offer a smartphone because in many countries of the world that is your first computing device. You know, there will be countries around the world where people may never own a tablet, or a PC, or a desktop. They will do everything on the smartphone. We're a computing company; we have to take advantage of that form factor," Whitman said, according to a transcript.
HP previously attempted to push into the mobile device market with its $1.2 billion purchase of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm in 2010, offering smartphones and eventually a tablet from that company based on the WebOS platform developed by the company. The devices did not catch on with consumers, however, and HP eventually decided to offer WebOS as an open-source operating system.
Whitman did not say what operating system an HP smartphone would use. The Palo Alto, Calif., tech giant has a close relationship with Microsoft Corp., with its personal computers running the company's Windows operating system. Smartphones running Microsoft's new Windows Mobile software are expected to hit the market soon, with devices being developed by Nokia, Samsung and other hardware manufacturers. Google's Android mobile OS could also be an option.
Whitman's comments focused more on the hardware, with the CEO saying "We've got to get it right this time."
"My mantra to the team is: 'Better right than faster than we should be there.' So we're working to make...
Whereas desktop and laptop users have long since discovered Safari and Chrome as alternatives to Internet Explorer and Firefox, most smartphone users have, so far, stuck with their pre-installed browser, which means whatever came with their iPhone or Android phone.
But there's no reason for smartphone users to stay stuck in that rut, when options like Dolphin, Firefox and Opera are also available for mobile device surfing and are easy to install.
"It's definitely worth it," says Rainer Hattenhauer, who has written multiple books about Android smartphones and tablets. "A lot of browsers come with little tricks to ease operations that make surfing more comfortable."
Firefox for Android, for example, supports tabs on its browser, as is common with many alternative browsers. That lets users switch between multiple pages, just like they would do on their desktop.
"You can do it with a simple swipe of the finger on Firefox," says Hattenhauer. "This way I go through the tabs like they were a stack of cards."
Opera for Android also employs tabs, as well as a customizable startup page that should be familiar to the Norwegian software maker's desktop clients. Every time it's called up, users are presented with a choice of nine favorite sites, all accessible with the touch of a finger.
Opera Mini, also available for the iPhone, promises easy surfing and quick connections since accessed Web sites are first compacted on Opera servers before being sent to the mobile.
Dolphin, available for both systems, is also catching on. Copying many desktop browsers, it can be expanded with add-ons that can alter the graphic interface or allow the browser to take screenshots or view PDF files. Dolphin also...
GSMArena.com - Latest articles
The Samsung Galaxy Note II has hit the pre-order stage in US and India. Those living in the US will now be able to pre-order the phone from US Cellular for $299.99 on a two-year contract for the 16GB model. Meanwhile, those of you who are reading this in India can now go on Samsung India's website and pre-order the unlocked version of the 16GB Galaxy Note II by paying ₹5,000 ($92)...
Apple has just started seeding its latest iOS 6 to iDevices around the globe. If you own a 4S, 4, 3GS or iPad 2, new iPad and iPod Touch you can expect to get the update in the following hours. This is the first iOS release that's available over the air so you can check the Software update menu on your eligible device. You can also check for the update from your computer, but you'll need...
HTC just unveiled the two latest additions to its smartphone lineup. Called HTC Windows Phone 8X and HTC Windows Phone 8S, the devices are unsurprisingly powered by the latest version of the Microsoft WP platform...
HTC just unveiled its second Windows Phone 8-powered smartphone - called Windows Phone 8S. It's more compact than the 8X and should go easier on the wallet as it comes with with less capable hardware. The HTC Windows Phone 8S is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset and runs on a 1GHz dual-core Krait processor and Adreno 225 GPU. It has 512MB of RAM and 4GB internal storage expandable...
HTC's event is underway and we just got to see the company's first two Windows Phone 8 handsets, with the HTC Windows Phone 8X being the flagship. Unlike the Titan, the HTC Windows Phone 8X is rather compact with its 4.3" 720p screen. It measures 132.4 x 66.2 x 10.1mm and weighs 130g. The HTC Windows Phone 8X (now that's a mouthful) uses a polycarbonate unibody, similar to that of the One...
Samsung has just announced its Galaxy Note II phablet in the United States. Unsurprisingly, Sammy is teaming up with all major US carriers including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular to reach as many users as possible. Samsung is saying that all of the carriers will have individual announcements for the device, but it should be available by mid-November. The US version of the...
LG officially confirmed the Optimus G for the US market. The quad-core beast was announced for few weeks ago, and had its official launch event for Korea yesterday. Today LG held another event dedicated to its new flagship, this time in New York. The Koreans used the occasion to confirm that the LG Optimus G will be coming to the US shores in Q4 of this year. Sadly, there were no...
It's still a couple of days early before the iPhone 5 arrives at the doorsteps of those over 2 million people that have pre-ordered it. But we're already seeing the first wave of reviews by the lucky few that have gotten their hands on Apple's latest smartphone and have given it a test run over the past couple of days. Those include Engadget, CNET, John Gruber of The Daring Fireball,...
The new iPhone 5 is a tough phone to get. We've already seen what it's like in front of Apple's brick-and-mortar stores, but there's quite the line forming at their virtual stores as well. Pre-orders started on September 14 and hit 2 million in a day. The iPhones pre-ordered then should ship on September 21, but if you are to pre-order one now you'd be in for a long wait - the Apple Store site...
In order to stir interest up prior to its event tomorrow, HTC has released a teaser of the product it is about to announce on its official Facebook page. As you can see in the photo above, the teaser reveals one of the device's corners. The text below the image says "when beautiful hardware meets stunning software." Despite all the raging rumors about an upcoming 5" Android...
ZTE has just announced the Grand Era U985 smartphone, which will debut on Chinese ground in a couple of days. The Grand Era U985 is powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 processor, boasts a 4.5" 720p display and an 8 MP camera on the back. It will bring support for the local TD-SCDMA networks. ZTE Grand Era U985 (click for larger image) ZTE claims that the Grand Era U985 is the slimmest...
The Intel Atom-powered Motorola RAZR i was announced just a few hours ago, but it's already gone on pre-order in the UK - one of the very few countries to get the phone in early October. The rest of the lucky regions are France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. The SIM free version (without any contract) goes around £345 (incl. VAT) in the UK. Clove and Expansys are already taking...
At a dedicated press event in London today, Motorola and Intel officially unveiled the RAZR i powered by an Intel Medfield chipset. The processor powering the Motorola RAZR i is a single-core 2GHz Intel Atom (yes, you read that right, 2GHz!) built on the 32nm manufacturing process. It supports hyper-threading as well, so its single-core architecture shouldn't be an issue. Motorola...
Aston Martin is launching a luxury Android smartphone - the Aston Martin Aspire. Despite its premium finish, the handset internals are rather uninspiring. The Aston Martin Aspire packs a 3.2-inch HVGA display and is powered by a single-core 800MHz processor. The rest of the specs include a 5MP snapper plus a VGA front facing one, 256MP RAM, 512MB ROM and a microSD slot. The connectivity...
Earlier this month Motorola announced a trio of RAZR phones in New York, but we knew all along that wasn't the end of it - both Moto and Intel had sent out invites for a European event in London, promising to take us to the edge...
Yesterday there were some rumors originating from Korea Times that Samsung is planning to announce the Galaxy S IV at the Mobile World Congress in February next year. To be honest those never really seemed probably, but we know that for sure as Samsung has officially denied them. The company used its official Twitter account to refute the Korea Times rumor that the next flagship Android...
The day has arrived for the Motorola Mobility and Intel joint event where we're expecting to the see new Motorola DROIDs running on Intel mobile processors. The US versions were announced just two weeks ago at the Motorola On Display event in New York City. There, we saw the announcements of several new devices, including the Motorola (DROID) RAZR HD, Motorola (DROID) RAZR MAXX HD, and the...
LG just launched its monstrously-spec'd Optimus G in its homeland and set a new performance benchmark for smartphones. The Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset that powers the beast features four Krait cores, which are all but guaranteed to wipe the floor with existing CPUs...
At a special event in South Korea, LG officially launched the most powerful Android phone do date, the Optimus G. Built around a 4.7-inch True HD IPS Plus display with a resolution of 1280 x 768 (15:9 ratio), the Optimus G is powered by a Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset, featuring a 1.5GHz quad-core Krait processor and the whopping 2GB of RAM. Naturally, this powerhouse boasts LTE connectivity...
With its likely unveiling less than 48 hours away, an alleged press shot of HTC's long rumored 5" smartphone has emerged. When official, the Taiwanese Android powerhouse will likely be called HTC One X 5. The rumored specs of the HTC One X 5 include a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset and a 1080p display. If this is the case, the handset will easily top the current crop of Android top...
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