The 'post-PC era' might be closer than we think

Tablets' success show people aren't buying PCs based 
on specs anymore, according to IDC. Pictured, from
foreground to background, Apple iPad, Galaxy Tab,
Dell Streak, and iPod Touch.

(Credit: Donald Bell/CNET)

Whether you agree with the phrasing or not, Steve Jobs' assertion
that we're in the
"post-PC era" might not be far from the truth.

The data on the latest PC market share for the first quarter of 2011 is out today and it
is not good for the sector. PC shipments were down year-over-year for the first time in 
almost two years. In other words, the bounce back that PC makers saw after the
recession? It's officially over.

IDC says global PC shipments shrank 3.2 percent from a year ago, worse than the already meager 1.5 percent growth the firm had predicted for the quarter. All told, 80.6 million PCs were shipped last quarter, but even the top sellers of PCs saw negative growth.

In terms of worldwide tallies, Hewlett-Packard's shipments were down 2.8 percent, Dell 1.8 percent, and Acer, 15.8 percent. Lenovo and Toshiba bucked the trend, seeing shipments actually grow 16.3 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively.

 In the U.S., while HP, Dell, and Acer shipments contracted--in Acer's case, down a disastrous 42 percent--Toshiba and Apple shipments were up 10.6 and 9.8 percent, respectively.

Since last June, Jobs has been weaving a narrative about us being in the "post-PC era." Unsurprisingly, his brash and some might say self-serving assessment of the state of the PC market rankled his competitors and critics since this era was coinciding with the marketing of the iPad.

Well, not only has his iPad done gangbusters sales and inspired a whole industry of copycats, the data seems now to be on his side too.

According to IDC, several factors (Japan disaster, unrest in the Middle East, a spike in fuel prices) are causing a PC market slump in the U.S. and Western Europe, but there's also this: "'Good-enough computing' has become a firm reality, exemplified first by mini notebooks and now media tablets."

In other words, people aren't making buying decisions based solely on specs anymore. Sure, people will still buy computers--post-PC doesn't mean we won't use PCs anymore--but their primacy is being diminished by devices that will do many of the basic PC tasks well: Web browsing, sending e-mail, checking Facebook, shopping online, getting directions, reading the news, etc.

"The iPad shows you don't have to have the best hardware. It's about marrying the software and hardware, and about what people can do with it," said Jay Chou, senior analyst for IDC. "I think that will be key in sustaining more PC growth."

It's a mantra Jobs has been repeating for years with his user-friendly, design-heavy take on technology. But he's not the only one who sees it that way now. Take, for example, HP, the perennial leader of worldwide PC sales, buying Palm last year and planning to use its proprietary software on mobile devices and eventually PCs.

"I'm not saying iPad and media tablets are going to eat PCs for lunch. This is what many people feared about Netbooks earlier," said Chou. "But we are seeing that hardware alone is not enough. Hardware vendors have to start thinking about software."

With limited budgets and inflationary pressure on gas and food prices, people are "tired" of buying new computers based on a 30-percent faster Intel processor alone, said Chou. "That's not quite enough anymore to justify spending and refereshing."

Even so, people are still going to buy PCs. Just not at the growth rates that PC makers have been used to, especially in established mature regions like North America and Western Europe. Emerging regions like Latin America and Asia still have people buying their first PC, so things will eventually pick up. When will that be? IDC says though the bad news will continue for the PC industry through next quarter, things might start looking up in the latter half of the year.

Twitter: Too many cooks could spoil this bird
Source-CNET

Is Twitter's flock not sure where it's flying?

(Credit: CC: Flickr user shutter41)

Over at Twitter, they like metaphors that involve birds. Maybe a little too much. So here's one for them: Right now, according to a couple of in-depth reports about Twitter's past and present executive structure, the whole company sure looks like a flock of birds that can't quite tell which among them is the leader. And as a result, they're all crashing into one another.

These reports run the gamut from well-researched to wildly speculative, from a Fortune profile of the company's current management turmoil--co-founder Evan Williams is out, ex-CEO Jack Dorsey is back, current CEO Dick Costolo can't seem to sharpen the Twitter business model--to missives from a "lost" Twitter co-founder and rumors that someone "high-level" at Twitter is actually spying for Google and has helped to thwart Twitter's attempts to poach talent. The rumors go one step further with the speculation that maybe it's legendary venture capitalist John Doerr.

Seriously. Some of it's so salacious that it seems like Twitter, seeing the success of "The Social Network," is trying to position itself as the subject of its own tense but acclaimed biopic by making the entire establishment seem packed to the walls with drama queens. I surmise that there's a giant whiteboard in the Twitter office that contains, on one side, Costolo's scribbled notes for a business plan that will actually work but which they aren't willing to release yet because, guys, we have to let it all look like it's really gone completely to hell first before we do that whole rise-like-a-phoenix thing, O.K.?, and on the other, everybody's suggestions for who's going to play them in the inevitable movie (the kid from "Hot Tub Time Machine" will totally play co-founder Biz Stone). Across the room, Jack Dorsey is sitting at a MacBook Air surfing fashion site Gilt Man for the tux that he's going to wear to the premiere.

Well, no. In fact, not at all. There are clearly real problems at Twitter, and at the root of them is the fact that it doesn't seem like this fast-growing, rapidly changing company has any clue who's actually in charge.

There are a couple of things that should be pointed out here.

First, the "trouble in the upper ranks" reports are something that no one should find surprising: Just about every groundbreaking tech company that's dealing with untested waters goes through them. Remember when everyone thought Mark Zuckerberg was on the verge of stepping down as Facebook CEO--and that if he wasn't, he should be? There was some serious upheaval in 2008 and 2009 at Facebook, which was about the same age that Twitter is now, as Chief Operating Officer Owen Van Natta resigned (according to many, because he realized he wasn't going to be getting Zuckerberg's job), Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu was ousted, and Zuckerberg's original co-founders drifted away from the company to start new projects.

Now, look at the situation: Zuckerberg, despite his youth and reports of personality clashes with other executives, remains at the helm of Facebook. He hired former Googler Sheryl Sandberg to head up company operations so that he can focus on leading an energetic army of hacker-engineers. The pundits who were calling for him to step aside have, by this point, realized that Facebook would not have accomplished everything that it has since the "Does Mark Zuckerberg need adult supervision?" headline days.

 

But--and here's my second point--we can't be confident that Twitter will persevere through these issues as effectively as Facebook did. That's because Twitter, with all its twee bird motifs and promotional videos of happy engineers in hipster T-shirts, lacks a powerful and brash visionary at the helm. Facebook is, at its core, "a Mark Zuckerberg production," as the bottom of every page on its servers used to display in small text. Yes, its origins have been contested. Yes, there are investors and senior executives whose last names are not Zuckerberg. But he's the guy at the top of the heap--no contest. At Twitter, is Costolo really in charge if he's brought in Dorsey as "executive chairman?" Even though Evan Williams has left the company, does the fact that he remains its biggest shareholder change things?

There are a lot of subtle lessons about running a business that can be gleaned from David Kirkpatrick's company-sanctioned tome "The Facebook Effect," not the least of which is that Facebook seems to have been the most unstable, management- and culture-wise, when there were a lot of people trying to get a piece of the action. Early investor meetings, Kirkpatrick relates, left Zuckerberg in tears on the floor of a restaurant bathroom. Multi-executive clashes over whether the company should prioritize revenue led to some of Facebook's worst in-fighting. Facebook's first massive product launch involving an advertising program with a whole host of Madison Avenue partners was an absolute disaster. It's a mature company that knows how to balance these relationships--either that, or it's one that has a CEO with steely confidence like Zuckerberg, whose own alleged megalomania may have saved the company time and again. Twitter isn't a mature company; it's one trying to get there. And it increasingly looks as though no one is quite willing to take the helm.

Evan Williams might be shrewd, as Business Insider characterizes him in its rundown of how early Twitter brain Noah Glass was ousted from the company, but he didn't grab the company by the horns (er, wings) the way Zuckerberg was able to do with Facebook. Dorsey, per Fortune, hasn't made a full commitment in his return to the company. And it seems that Twitter's investors have significantly more sway over the company than Facebook's do over Zuckerberg's team.

Twitter's real problem isn't whether there's someone sneaking into board meetings under a cloak of invisibility so that he or she can sell tips to Google and Facebook like some kind of "Rocky and Bullwinkle" villain. It's that there are way too many people in positions of power and no one willing or able to declare that he (since we are dealing exclusively with a bunch of dudes here) is the real face of the company. There are plenty of other issues at Twitter that are perfectly normal for a young technology brand--the need to sustain growth, the need to keep its servers afloat, a way to turn millions of "passive" users into contributors as eager as Twitter power user Ashton Kutcher. A lack of clarity as to who's exactly calling the shots in upper management is not helping.

It might look obnoxious. There might be (figurative) bloodshed. We've seen this in the days since Larry Page returned to the CEO post at Google, where one senior vice president has already departed and more are rumored to be on the way as Page attempts to clean out bureaucracy. But Twitter is still a service protected largely by the fragile shell of trendiness, cushioned by hordes of newshounds and Justin Bieber fangirls but still not counting the average Web user as an active participant. It's still unstable in so many ways that a management mess could, indeed, cripple it.

I don't know who it'll be who steps up to the plate, or how much of it will be smoke and mirrors. But I'd argue that what Twitter needs is less a matter of Steve Jobs-like "vision" and more about practical leadership. The irony here is that what causes chaos in Twitter's management is exactly why the product itself is so special. From its inception, Twitter has had beauty in its mass malleability, one moment a breaking-news platform in the Middle East and the next a comedy one-liner generator stoked by Conan O'Brien, letting its "vision" be dictated not by an executive with a pitch-perfect blend of marketing and digital product expertise but by the users themselves.

More watching Netflix on Apple TV than iPad 

Source- CNET

Netflix running on the new Apple TV.

(Credit: Apple)

The Apple TV has eclipsed the iPad in overall viewership of Netflix content, the movie-rental company said yesterday.
"Apple TV has done very well for us, and in just four months has passed the also-growing iPad in Netflix viewing hours," the company wrote in its letter to shareholders.
Netflix stopped short of providing exact viewer figures for the two Apple devices, but the very fact that the Apple TV is now leading the iPad is impressive. Apple has sold millions of iPads since the device launched last year, and it sold 7.33 million units in its last-reported quarter alone. In December, Apple announced that it was nearing 1 million units sold of its set-top box since that device's launch at the end of September.
Apple's iPhone is also "very popular" among Netflix streaming customers, but the company reported that "Windows and Mac laptops, Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox, and Nintendo Wii" are the most popular Netflix-streaming options.
Netflix enjoyed a strong 2010. The company reported that it added 7.7 million customers on the year, easily besting its estimated 3.6 million additions. It now has over 20 million customers. Netflix generated a $47 million profit during the fourth quarter on $596 million of revenue.

Open Source in GSM Could Breed Mobile Mayhem

Source-:  TechNewsWorld

The open source code for GSM base station programming could allow malicious hackers to set up rogue base stations and grab control of peoples' cellphones, according to security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann. He's raised particular concern about such activities near places like airports and embassies, but other researchers have questioned the seriousness of the threat.

__________________________________________________

Mobile malware may grow as a security threat this year, but security researcher Ralf-Philipp Weinmann says there's a worse threat lurking around -- the GSM baseband system.

The threat from hacking GSM baseband systems has been largely ignored, Weinmann reportedly told the audience at a presentation at the Black Hat security conference in Washington, D.C., Monday.
The advent of open source code for base station programming now lets hackers create their own base stations that will let them take over all smartphones within range in a scenario Weinmann calls the "baseband apocalypse."

What's With this Baseband Stuff?

In a cellphone network, the base station system handles traffic and signals between a mobile phone and the network subsystem. Base transceiver stations are found at cell antenna sites.
By creating a rogue base transceiver station using easily available open source baseband code, Weinmann has previously demonstrated that hackers can easily take over smartphones within the range of the rogue station.
Weinmann's found that Layer 3 of the GSM Um interface, which manages connectivity, mobility and radio resources, has many vulnerabilities that can be easily exploited. At Black Hat, he demonstrated what he claimed are the first over-the-air exploitations of memory corruption in GSM/3GPP stacks that allow malicious code to be executed on baseband processors.
Weinmann has made several presentations on the danger from GSM base station systems over the past year. He says neither the GSM Association nor the European Telecommunications Standards Institute have considered the possibility of hackers setting up or using malicious base stations to compromise mobile phones.
The GSM Association and AT&T (NYSE: T), which uses GSM technology, did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

What Clear and Present Danger?

With the advent of inexpensive new hardware such as femtocells, the threat of someone setting up a rogue base transceiver station is increasing, Weinmann contended.
Wireless carriers in the United States are making femtocells readily available to consumers in hopes of broadening their coverage areas. AT&T, for example, offers the 3G MicroCell, which acts as a mini-cellular tower, to subscribers.
Weinmann's scenario has hackers setting up cheap rogue transceivers at busy sites such as airports or in the financial districts of cities, or near embassies.
Other security researchers, however, have questioned whether this constitutes a serious threat.
"GSM isn't being used for transmitting mission-critical data," Godfrey Chua, director of mobility at ACG Research, told LinuxInsider.
"Perhaps that's why it hasn't been a priority to be addresses," Chua added. "GSM systems are basically designed for voice."
Further, specifications for the GSM standard were published in 1990, well before wireless data transmission was envisioned, Chua said.
Weinmann did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

The Mobile, Social Enterprise Cloud

Source- TechNewsWorld

Salesforce's developments and offerings provide a prime example of how social collaboration, mobile and cloud reinforce each other, spurring on adoption that fosters serious productivity improvements that then invite yet more use and an accelerating overall adoption effect. This is happening not at what we quaintly referred to as "Internet Time," but at far swifter viral explosion time.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Back in the mid-1990s, then Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) CEO Bill Gates offered a prophetic observation.

The impact of the Web, he wrote, would be greater than most people thought, but would take longer to happen than was commonly supposed.
Turns out, happily for Microsoft, that he was right.
Yet now, perhaps not so pleasantly for Redmond, the confluence of mobile computing, social online interactions and cloud computing are together supporting a wave of change that will both be more impactful than many think -- and also happen a lot quicker than is expected.
More evidence of this appeared last week, building on momentum that capped a very dynamic 2010.
Startup Bitzer Mobile Inc. last week announced its Enterprise Virtualized Mobility solution (EVM), which makes a strong case for an ecumenical yet native apps approach to mobile computing for enterprises.
Bitzer Mobile is banking on the urgency that enterprise IT departments are feeling to deliver apps and data to mobile devices -- from BlackBerry to iOS, Android, and WebOS. But knowing the enterprise, they also know that adoption of such sweeping change needs to be future-proofed and architected for enterprise requirements. More on EVM later.
Another hastening development in the market is Salesforce.com's (NYSE: CRM) pending release the first week of February of the Spring '11 release of its flagship CRM SaaS applications. The upgrade includes deeper integrations with Chatter collaboration and analytics services, so that sales, marketing and service employees can be far more powerful and productive in how they innovate, learn and teach in their roles. The trend toward collaborative business process that mobile-delivered mobile Web apps like Salesforce.com's CRM suite now offer are literally changing the culture of workers overnight.

Advancing Cloud Services

Last month, at its Dreamforce conference, Salesforce also debuted a database in the cloud service, Database.com, that combines attractive heterogeneous features for a virtual data tier for developers of all commercial, technical and open source persuasions. Salesforce also bought Heroku and teamed with BMC Software on its RemedyForce cloud configuration management offering.
Salesforce's developments and offerings provide a prime example of how social collaboration, mobile and cloud reinforce each other, spurring on adoption that fosters serious productivity improvements that then invite yet more use and an accelerating overall adoption effect. This is happening not at what we quaintly referred to as "Internet Time," but at far swifter viral explosion time.
As I traveled at the end of 2010, to both Europe and the U.S. coasts, I was struck by the pervasive use of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPads by the very people who know a productivity boon when they see it and will do whatever they can to adopt it. Turns out they didn't have to do too much nor spend too much. Bam.
I also recently fielded calls from nearly frantic IT architects asking how they can hope to satisfy the demand to quickly move key apps and data to iPads and the most popular smartphones for their employees. My advice was and is: the mobile Web. It's not a seamless segue, but it allows the most mobile extension benefits the soonest, does not burn any deployment bridges, and allows a sane and thoughtful approach to adopting native apps if and when that becomes desired.
Clearly, the decision now for apps providers is no longer Mac or PC, Java or .NET -- but rather native or Web for mobile? The architecture discussion for supporting cloud is also shifting toward lightweight middleware.
I still think that the leveraging of HTML5 and extending current Web, portal, and RIA apps sets to the mobile tier (any of the major devices types) is the near-term best enterprise strategy, but Bitzer Mobile and its EVM has gotten me thinking. Their approach is architected to support the major mobile native apps AND the Web complements.
IT wants to leverage and exploit all the remote access investments they've made. They want to extend the interception of business processes to anyone anywhere with control and authenticity. And they do not necessarily want to buy, support and maintain an arsenal of new mobile devices -- not when their power users already possess a PC equivalent in their shirt pockets. Not when their CFOs won't support the support costs.

A Piece of Mobile Real Estate

So Bitzer Mobile places a container on the user's personal mobile device and allows the IT department to control it. Its a virtual walled garden on the tablet or smartphone that, I'm told, does not degrade performance. The device does need a fair amount of memory, and RIM devices will need an SD card flash supplement (for now).
The Bitzer Mobile model also places a virtualization layer for presentation layer delivery at the app server tier for the apps and data to be delivered to the mobile containers. And there's a control panel (either SaaS or on-premises) that manages the deployments, access and operations of the mobile tier enablement arrangement. Native apps APIs and SKDs can be exploited, ISV apps can be made secure and tightly provisioned, and data can be delivered across the mobile networks and to the containers safely, Bitzer Mobile says.
That was fast. It's this kind of architected solution, I believe, that will ultimately appeal most to IT and service providers ... the best of the thin client, virtualized client, owner-managed client and centrally controlled presentation layer of existing apps and data model. It lets enterprise IT drive, but users get somewhere new fast.
Architecture is destiny in IT, but we're now seeing the shift to IT architecture as opposed to only enterprise architecture. You're going to need both. That's what happens when SaaS providers fulfill their potential, when data and analytics can come from many places, when an individual's iPhone is a safe enterprise end-point.
And so as cloud providers like Salesforce.com provide the new models, and the likes of Bitzer Mobile extend the older models, we will see the benefits of cloud, mobile and social happen bigger and faster than any of us would have guessed.

Can HP Wedge webOS Into the Tablet World?

Source- Tech news world

One Feb. 9, HP will share news about webOS, the mobile operating system in acquired when it bought Palm. This could mean a webOS tablet is on the way that would compete with the likes of the iPad. But with so many other tablets out there, including the RIM Playbook and a universe of Android devices, will a webOS tablet follow the same road as webOS smartphones?

_______________________________________________________________________________

HP (NYSE: HPQ) has invited members of the media to what it describes as "an exciting webOS announcement."

This will be held Feb. 9 in San Francisco.
The invitation sparked new rumors that HP was at last going to unveil at least one webOS-based tablet.
However, Alex Hunter of HP's Palm Global Business Unit declined comment when pressed for details about what will be unveiled at the event.

 

What About a webOS Tablet?

HP has apparently been ambivalent about choosing between Windows tablets and those running webOS, the operating system it acquired when it purchased Palm for US$1.2 billion.
There have long been rumors that HP would unveil a so-called Slate tablet running Windows 7; then it was reported that the company was turning its back on Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) in favor of tablets running webOS; later still, the rumor mill had it that HP would offer both. Last year, the company revealed a Windows tablet, though it was directed more at enterprises than consumers.
HP in fact stated it would unveil a webOS tablet early this year, leading to speculation it would do so at the Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas earlier this month. However, no webOS tablet was seen there.
Logging onto the Palm website provides a hint at what may be unveiled Feb. 9.
A Jan. 4 entry by Palm Online Communications Director Jon Zilber mentions a tablet, "lots more phones, and ePrint, and cool apps, oh my."

Will HP Reprise the Curse of Palm?

Before being purchased by HP, Palm had brought out several new smartphones, including the Pre and the Pre Plus, to generally warm approval. The devices were well-regarded, but it was the operating system -- webOS -- that really wowed everyone.
WebOS was generally seen as one of the most advanced mobile operating systems available.
However, that did not help pull Palm out of the doldrums, and it eventually was put up for sale.
Will tablets running webOS meet the same fate -- warm approval but poor sales?
Not if HP proves canny in its marketing, Jeff Orr, a principal analyst at ABI Research, told TechNewsWorld.
HP has been shipping true tablet PCs running a full version of the Windows operating system quite successfully for the past 5 years, Orr pointed out. And when it began shipping the Slate 500 PC running Windows 7, it targeted the business market, he said.
"HP didn't position the Slate 500 against the iPad," Orr pointed out, adding that the company leveraged its presence in the vertical market instead. "Could the next iteration of the product run webOS?" Orr asked. "Why not?"
Perhaps HP will take a vertical business approach with a Slate-like tablet running webOS this year, Orr speculated.

What webOS Tablets Will Need to Succeed

Sure, there's the iPad, the Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab out in the market, and a slew of other manufacturers have announced plans to unveil tablets running Android 3.0, nicknamed Honeycomb, later this year, said Richard Shim, a senior analyst at Display Search.
However, the numbers will be whittled down by competition.
"We're estimating that only 75 percent of the players in the tablet market will be around by next year," Shim told TechNewsWorld. "In two years, only about 30 percent will be left."
That's because launching a new tablet goes well beyond just offering new hardware. "You have to come up with a new operating system, you have to build the developer community, and ultimately, it's the apps that will determine the product's success," Shim said.
The lack of apps may be a weak spot for HP. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is far and away the clear market leader in that regard, and Android is racing fast to catch up.

Apple Redux

However, HP/Palm may be able to get around the lack of apps through sound strategy, Shim said.
"HP will have a smartphone lineup, a tablet lineup, printers, they'll have control of the whole experience, just like Apple," Shim stated.
"Like Apple, they'll have control of their environment, have a closed OS, and have close collaboration between the apps, the OS and the hardware," Shim added. "So it will be challenging for webOS, but it won't be hopeless because HP will have control of their own destiny."

USB overseers: No, USB 3 isn't late 

Source- (CNET)

Jeff Ravencraft, USB-IF's president

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Relax--these things take time.
That, in brief, was the message of Jeff Ravencraft, president of the USB Implementors Forum, when I asked him why it was taking the third-generation version of Universal Serial Bus so long to arrive. Intel and others have been touting the sequel to USB 2 since 2007.
"People forget that historically, there is no chipset company in the world that integrated USB from the get-go. It didn't happen with USB 1, It didn't happen with USB 2, It didn't happen with USB 3," Ravencraft said. I takes "a minimum of two years if not more" for a company such as Intel to build USB 3 support into its the chipsets that accompany its processors, he said.
During that time, the first companies build special-purposes chips to handle USB communications, devices get their first support, industry groups hold plug-fests to iron out interoperability problems, he said. Now, with that process well under way, USB 3 is headed for the mainstream.
The cost of USB chips have dropped from about $7 each more than a year ago to about $1 now for devices that plug in with USB 3 and $2 for "host" systems such as computers into which USB devices can be plugged, he said.
"Every penny counts, but at those prices, companies are going, 'Yeah, we're going to roll,'" Ravencraft said.
USB 2 is ubiquitous, spreading far beyond the Windows PCs where it began to Macs, mobile phones, and countless other electronic devices. USB 3, which goes by the name of "SuperSpeed USB" when a device using it passes the USB-IF's testing requirements, is still in the process of coming to market.
USB 3's sales pitch is seemingly a slam dunk: its 5-gigabit-per-second data-transfer rate is 10 times faster than USB 2's, it cuts power consumption by a third, and it can be used to send 80 percent more electrical current so that phones or other devices can charge faster over USB. Intel and others developing the technology handed it off to the USB-IF in November 2008 to manage its real-world use.
The first USB 3 products to market were external hard drives, where the benefits of higher data-transfer rates are clearer, and add-on cards for PCs to let people plug such devices into machines without built-in support. Now a lot more mass storage devices such as thumb drives are arriving. A total of 165 products have passed USB-IF's certification program. Just today, high-end camera maker Phase One announced its new IQ180 80-megapixel medium-format digital sensor module can use USB 3 to transfer its 80-megabyte photos.
But built-in USB hasn't been racing to the market. Intel chipsets supporting USB 3 likely won't arrive until late this year at the earliest, and 2012 is a very real possibility. That would be well over three years from the spec's hand-off to the USB-IF to full integration into the PC hardware realm.
But new interconnects--especially ones with USB's breadth of adoption and cost constraints--are not easy to engineer. When Intel touted USB 3 in 2007, it said it would include fiber-optic links to reach high speeds. In 2008, that optical ambition then moved laterally to a technology Intel called Light Peak--which conveniently used modified USB connectors. Then the initial version of Light Peak switched to copper wiring rather than optical links.
Faster future
When it does arrive, USB has some room for growth, though.

First off, Ravencraft said, the protocol itself that governs communications was designed to reach a speed five times faster than USB 3: 25 gigabits per second. USB 3 host controllers, which do a lot of the USB talking, also will work at this rate without needing a redesign, he said.
Second, the USB connectors can accommodate fiber-optic lines.
"If we need to go to optical, we've future-proofed the connector to take optical fiber," Ravencraft said. "If that requirement comes about, it'll be a simple transition. I don't think that time is anytime soon."
USB 3 has plenty of potential uses besides external hard drives and cameras. Syncing music and video between a computer and a media player or phone would go faster. Scanners could transfer images to computers more swiftly. Phones and other devices could get universal chargers--indeed Europe is standardizing chargers on a Micro USB interface. External displays could be attached more easily not just to PCs but to phones as well. And note that USB can use the HDCP copy protection content owners demand and that the USB-IF is working on a new USB profile to make video use better.
Wireless USB
And should the USB advocates be complacently tempted to presume that past success is a guarantee of future results, there's a cautionary tale with USB: the wireless transition.
Wireless USB has been finished for years, but it remains largely unknown to most people and products, even as the idea of connecting devices wirelessly with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth becomes well-known.
Even with Wireless USB, though, Ravencraft has some optimism--though he cautions that he's "not trying to overhype it."
The version was hampered by different country regulations governing what wireless frequencies could be used and by the difficulties of authorizing a wireless connection between two devices.
But the connection is easier now, and new UltraWideBand (UWB) wireless communication technology using the 6GHz frequency spectrum, introduced with Wireless USB 1.1, gives him some optimism.
Device makers "now have the capability to design a product that has a worldwide footprint," he said. And there's now a good use for Wireless USB arriving that could start encouraging some adoption: "making a simple connection from a notebook to a TV display in the living room without having to run any cables."
It remains to be seen whether it will truly catch on, though. Ravencraft certainly isn't making any promises.
"That space in wireless--there are so many different ways to skin a cat. Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi PAN, Bluetooth, Zigby, Wireless USB, WiMax, wireless HD--they're all in the same space trying to be both the high and low end," Ravencraft said. "I think there's going to be some thinning of the herd."

iPhone service pricing: Verizon vs. AT&T (FAQ)

Source- (CNET)

The long-awaited launch of the Verizon Wireless iPhone is almost here, so how much will Verizon charge new iPhone users on its network?
When Verizon Wireless first announced a couple of weeks ago it would begin selling the CDMA version of the iPhone, the company didn't disclose pricing of the service plans. And for the past two weeks, the company has been rather cagey about talking specifics of the pricing plan.
Even though Verizon has danced around the idea of offering usage-based billing with various pricing tiers for months, the company has now revealed that it will charge iPhone subscribers the same price it's been charging other smartphone customers.
The news has left many would-be Verizon iPhone customers pondering what they should do. The Verizon iPhone that goes on sale February 10 is the same model that Apple launched in June 2010 on AT&T. Most of the features are the same. The networks are different, which will be the deciding factor for many customers. But for bargain-hunters looking for the best deal in terms of service for the iPhone, Verizon isn't giving them much to get excited about.
So far, it doesn't appear that Verizon is taking any aggressive steps in pricing to win customers from AT&T, which has been the only carrier in the U.S. to offer the iPhone since it was launched in 2007. But the carrier is hoping to entice some consumers by continuing to offer its unlimited data plan for $29.99 a month, at least for now.
To help iPhone fans get a better handle on service pricing from Verizon and AT&T for the iPhone, CNET has put together this FAQ.
How much will it cost me per month to own the Verizon iPhone?
Your individual monthly bill will depend on what features you add. But for now Verizon plans to charge iPhone users the same fees it's charging its other smartphone customers. So this means you will have the choice between different voice plans that range in price from $39.99 for 450 minutes of voice time to $69.99 for unlimited voice. Verizon also offers texting plans, including a $20 unlimited texting plan.
The data plan, which is required when you subscribe to any Verizon smartphone, costs $29.99 per month. And it is unlimited. Verizon caps data usage on its wireless data cards that are used to connect laptops to the Internet. And it also applies a data cap on devices that connect to its network via a MiFi device. But for pure smartphone Internet data usage, such as subscribers using the iPhone, the service is considered unlimited. So there are no hidden overage charges from Verizon when using an unlimited data service on your smarpthone in the U.S.
Didn't Verizon offer a cheaper data plan for smarpthones that only cost $15? What happened to that?
Verizon has eliminated the $15 a month plan that offered 150MB of data per month. The company said that this service, which it introduced in October last year, was a promotion. That said, the company has indicated that it will offer tiered services in the future. So perhaps it will change the amount of data or the price tag in a future offering.
How does AT&T's iPhone service compare in price to what Verizon will offer with the iPhone?
In terms of voice services, AT&T and Verizon offer almost the exact same plans that range in price from $39.99 to $69.99 a month for 450 minutes to unlimited, respectively. AT&T also offers texting options, which include a $20 a month unlimited texting plan.
Where the price differs between the two service providers is in data. AT&T no longer offers an unlimited data plan for new smartphone customers, including new iPhone customers. Instead, new customers can choose between a $25 a month plan that offers 2GB of data and a $15 a month plan that offers 200MB of data.
What about tethering? How much does it cost from either AT&T or Verizon?
Each carrier offers tethering. And they each charge $20 extra a month to use the iPhone or any smartphone as a modem to connect at least one other device to the Internet. But beyond the basic prices, the plans work very differently and that can factor into the overall cost of the service.
That sounds complicated. Can you explain how Verizon prices the tethering plan for the iPhone?
It is sort of complicated. So the way it works for Verizon is that a customer who wants to tether can pay $20 on top of the $30 data fee for the ability to use their iPhone as a modem. The added benefit of Verizon's tethering plan is that turns the iPhone into a Wi-Fi router, and you can connect up to 5 devices to the Internet via the iPhone. The $20 additional fee will give you 2GB of data that is separate from the unlimited data that you can use when using your iPhone as an iPhone. But if you go over the 2GB cap, Verizon charges an additional $20 for every 1GB that you use over the cap.
How is this priced differently from the tethering feature that AT&T offers on the iPhone? Can the AT&T iPhone be used as a hot spot, too?
AT&T offers the ability to turn the iPhone and other smartphones into a modem to connect one other device to the Internet. But it does not turn it into a Wi-Fi hot spot, like the Verizon iPhone does.
Like Verizon, subscribers to the service must pay an extra $20 a month on top of the $25 2GB a month data fee.
But one key difference is that 2GB of data usage is for both regular iPhone data usage and also any data usage incurred by a device connected through the iPhone. This means it's very easy to eat through the allotted data on this plan. But the overage charge is cheaper than Verizon's. It's only $10 extra for an additional 1GB of data if you exceed the 2GB limit.
I've heard that Verizon is only offering the unlimited data plan for the iPhone on a limited basis now. When will they stop offering limited data plans?
You are correct. Verizon representatives have said that the unlimited iPhone data deal will only be offered for a limited time. After that the company plans to offer some kind of tiered service that provides buckets of Gigabytes per month. That's all they are saying at the moment. They haven't said how long the promotion will last or what the new plan will look like in the future. But if you get an unlimited data plan while it's offered, you will have that unlimited plan until your contract expires.
What happens after my contract expires on Verizon? Will I be able to get a new phone and keep my unlimited data plan?
The terms and pricing of your Verizon data plan only apply for as long as you are within your contract period. After your two-year contract expires, you can keep your phone and keep the unlimited data plan. But if you want to upgrade to a new phone, you'll have to sign a new contract and be subject to whatever the new pricing is at that time.
I've heard that if you already have an unlimited data plan on AT&T's network that you get to keep that for life? Is that true?
AT&T has "grandfathered" all its smartphone subscribers who were using its service before June 2010. This means that existing customers on contract can keep the unlimited data plan. And if they don't change their plans, they can keep the unlimited plan as long as they like, even if they upgrade to a new phone. For customers who bought their phones after June 7, 2010, they must choose one of the two plans currently offered.
How important is it to have unlimited data service? Should this even be a factor in my decision between getting the iPhone on Verizon or AT&T?
It depends on how much data you think you will use. But for the average person, the 2GB plan from AT&T offers plenty of data usage each month. And for some very low-data usage customers, AT&T's $15 a month plan with 200MB of data is sufficient. And it offers them a way to save some money. But most people will need the 2GB plan, which at $25 a month is only $5 cheaper than Verizon's current unlimited data plan.
AT&T and Verizon offer tools on their Web sites to help you estimate your data usage.
Who would benefit most from an unlimited data plan?
If you plan to stream a lot of media or use applications that you must constantly refresh then you might benefit from an unlimited data plan. For example, listening to Pandora for three to five hours at a time could be a problem. Watching one or two movies a day could also get your monthly usage close to the 2GB mark. Using Google Maps several hours a day every day could also almost reach that limit. Using Skype as the primary way to call people will also get consumers close to their data limit.
But if you are using these applications in moderation, or if you use them mostly in Wi-Fi hot spots, which does not count toward your data usage totals, then you probably would be fine with AT&T's 2GB service. You can also cut down on your data usage by not installing or upgrading apps over the air. You can upgrade them without consuming wireless data by syncing your phone to your computer.
One thing to keep in mind is that data usage will likely increase as more data-hungry applications are introduced. So for many people, the unlimited data plans are really an insurance policy to guard against potentially heart-stopping data overages at the end of the month.

 

Facebook offers speed test for Web-based games 

Facebook has released a benchmark designed to help developers test just how powerful desktop and mobile browsers are at running a new generation of games built with a new generation of Web standards.
One of the most important of those standards is the JavaScript programming language, which is ubiquitous on the Web and ever faster in browsers. Enter Facebook's JSGameBench, designed specifically for measuring game issues such as displaying "sprites," the graphics out of which animated characters are made.
"Although there are many other benchmark suites that measure JavaScript performance, we wanted to build one focused specifically on key game performance metrics," said Facebook engineer Cory Ondrejka in a blog post last night. "JSGameBench exists to explore HTML5's game performance limits," he added, using HTML5 in the broad all-sorts-of-new-Web-technologies sense currently in vogue in some circles.
It's only at version 0.1, so expect lots of changes. So far, though, Microsoft's upcoming IE9 crushes the competition on the speed test, with the Windows version of Google's upcoming Chrome 10 in second place.

IE9 leads the browser pack when it comes to an early version of a Facebook test of Web-based game performance.

(Credit: Facebook)

Mobile browsers are particularly important at Facebook, and the new benchmark fits in there, too. "JSGameBench generally works on mobile browsers, but properly abstracted touch and gesture events are key to games working across multiple phones," Ondrejka said.
Ondrejka, by the way, has an interesting history in the digital realm. After a falling out in 2007, he left the chief technology officer job at Linden Lab, which operates the Second Life virtual world, then spent some time at music label EMI. After that stint, he worked on a variety of programming projects then co-founded a start-up called Walletin with his friend Bruce Rogers. Facebook hired the pair before the project got off the ground.
Browser performance is tricky to quantify, in part because there are so many possible things to measure. In that, it's like just about every other benchmark: its relevance is limited by how well its tests represent real-world challenges. A benchmark limited to gaming applications has similar issues of scope, but it is a narrower task than analyzing all possible Web-based programs.
Microsoft, as part of its effort to promote IE9 and its hardware acceleration, is also interested in showcasing performance with a series of browser games and demos on its Internet Explorer Test Drive site.
Microsoft may have idled through the last decade of browser activity, but it's fully awake now with IE9. It's got a competitive browser almost done, it's engaged in setting Web standards, and it's got its technical marketing team in high gear.
A recent example: Yesterday, Microsoft detailed one of its benchmark-esque demos, called Blizzard. The company teased apart how the site exercises many of the new Web technologies. Among them are SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) for durved lines, Canvas for 2D graphics combined with JavaScript to animate their movement, WOFF (Web Open Font Format) for custom typography, built-in HTML5 audio, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for styling.

There's no such thing as 'social media revolution' 

Source- (Cnet)

(Credit: istockphoto)

There seems to be a contingent out there that analyzes each of the globe's various political conflicts and attempts to figure out, through plenty of speculation and the occasional Wikipedia look-ups of far-flung sovereignties, which uprising will mark the first true "social media revolution."
A dictator toppled by Twitter or ousted through the efforts of a Facebook group? It's an enticing idea, particularly for those who are in the business of social media and have a personal stake of sorts in tallying each instance of social media's global value making headlines. Twitter punditry this week has been peppered with speculation about whether upheaval in Tunisia or the subsequent anti-government protests in Egypt might amount to the "first" true revolution spawned by social media. But this just isn't the right way to measure things: the occurrence of a "social media revolution," at this point, should be neither noteworthy nor remarkable. If a dictator is overthrown or a government ousted, it would be notable if Facebook or Twitter weren't used.
That's because social media is a part of the world we live in and has become such a crucial form of communication that it will factor into any political movement nearly anywhere in the world. In other words, the use of Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube should not be what's worth talking about. At this point, it takes away from the substance of the revolution (or lack thereof) itself.
This sort of rhetoric has been going on for nearly two years when an anti-government uprising in Iran swelled up through Twitter and, as a result of traditional media crackdowns, became the primary medium in which much of the world knew about what was going on in the Islamic nation. The activists' efforts ultimately had far less impact on the government than many of the breathless Twitter observers expected, and for too many of them it's now known as the movement in which everyone tinted their Twitter profile photos with green as a sign of solidarity (which now seems awfully passive). This, alas, wasn't "the social media revolution." And so the pundits moved on.
So let's look at the basic numbers. Facebook has more than 600 million users around the world, an inarguable lock on the mainstream in much of the world and significant penetration even in the countries where it doesn't have as much reach. Twitter is about one-third its size, though its most active users tend to be more in the vein of newshounds and culture fans than FarmVille players and vacation photo swappers--which may be the reason why the smaller Twitter is as important, if not more so, than Facebook in political activism. Both social media services are actively looking to expand their reach in developing countries, particularly Facebook, which has launched mobile sites and applications geared to lower-end cell phones and slower connections.
The truth is that smaller elements of "social media revolution" have been all around us already for over half a decade--even in our own, comparatively humdrum political system in which "revolution" means a switch in the partisan balance of a governing body accompanied by plenty of red-and-blue news-ticker graphics on cable networks. George Allen, a Republican senator from Virginia, was in a tight race for re-election in 2006 until a video from a campaign rally surfaced on YouTube in which he called one of his opponent's campaign staff volunteers by a bizarre epithet that turned out to be a racial slur of sorts. The video went viral, Allen lost, and his "macaca moment" has been widely highlighted as the source of his downfall--in spite of the presence of countless strategists, publicists, and glossy campaign ads, social media's power prevailed.
Yes, social media can lead to the improbable rise of leaders who otherwise might never have had a shot. Without Meetup and the readership of liberal blogs, former Vermont governor Howard Dean might never have had a shot at the Democratic presidential nomination (which, of course, he lost). In 2008, Barack Obama's campaign team's digital savviness was a crucial component in the candidate's popularity among young voters who heavily favored him at the polls. Two years after Obama's inauguration, these things should no longer surprise us--nor should we be surprised that, yes, social media is a vital instrument in political change all over the world.
That's the way things are in an age full of widely accessible yet largely uncontrolled media, in which the barrier to entry for any individual has been vastly lowered and the potential power of an organized mass can impact longstanding establishments. These technological developments have been groundbreaking. But they are not new. And "revolutionaries," whoever they may be, will use social media as an expanded set of tools for the tasks that have always been and remain the most crucial to activists: amassing support, communicating with like-minded people, and spreading the word. The tactics haven't changed. It's just that the available channels of communication have expanded.
Where it does get interesting, social media-wise, is where and when governments choose to crack down. On Tuesday evening, Twitter finally confirmed that Egypt was blocking access to its service after initially refusing to comment on the matter directly, but there were no reports on attempts to control Facebook or any other grassroots organization tool. This sort of thing provides some insight into what a government sees as its biggest digital threats and how it attempts to control and dissuade opposition forces. But the real focus ought to be on what's being said. The real meat of a political uprising is the message itself, and hype about digital media's impact on it all should be well enough accepted by now that it shouldn't take over the limelight.
And should that successful "social media revolution" come along, I hope the digerati gives the successful activists some credit: If they topple a dictator, the real reason isn't that Facebook Groups made it possible for them to organize or because they generated a clever Twitter hashtag. Social media has changed the world, but by no means does it provide a substitute for the human energy and willpower that can bring down governments and cause global reverberations. Let's focus on understanding what really happens.
Besides, if you're keeping a scorecard for social media, you might want to note that, 600 million Facebook users later, it's already won.