The iPhone 4S has copped a lot of flack for being a ‘catchup’ product, but I think that ignores a key Apple advantage.
After the iPhone 4S launch, Gizmodo US’ Mat Honan wrote how he was disappointed with the iPhone 4S. At the time, I was too. The iPhone 4S launch was itself a little flat, and the phone wasn’t quite the hit for six that might have been expected after eighteen months of development time. Slowly, however, my opinion is changing.
As rapidly seems be becoming the norm, I should launch into this with a couple of simple starting caveats and requests. Firstly, if you could kindly keep the troll/fanboi comments to a minimum, I’d appreciate it. In one sense, knock yourself out, but really, hasn’t it all been trolled before? More pertinently, I’m making the below observations with no hands-on time with an iPhone 4S yet. Believe, me, I’m working to rectify that any way I can, but it’s an important caveat for reasons that should shortly become clear.
There’s been a lot of criticism and comparison made between the iPhone 4S and existing Android handsets, given that one of the selling pitches for the iPhone 4S is the use of a dual-core A5 processor, and dual-core on Android is nothing new. Some of that’s fair comparison — we are, after all, talking about smartphones in the smartphone market — but some of it misses what might be a critical point — optimisation.
Androids can beat Apples iphone 4s
If there’s one trait that defines Apple, it’s control. Just as Google’s all about information (its, yours, mine) and Facebook’s all about being social (and privacy be damned), Apple’s a company that works from a central control mantra. Apple knows exactly what’s going into its products at every single level, and it’s a key reason why there aren’t that many Apple product lines at any one time. To draw things back to last week’s launch, one of the most surprising things to emerge was the fact that the iPhone 3GS didn’t become obsolete. It’s pretty clear that this is solely so Apple can have a “$0” phone in the States; I wouldn’t advise anyone to rush out and buy a 3GS today. I figured the one thing you could have put money on last week was that the 3GS was about to be made redundant, because usually, Apple has relatively few product lines so that it can focus its development efforts on that hardware alone.
Androids can beat Apples iphone 4s
There’s a reason why Mac OS works well on Mac hardware; it’s because the hardware is entirely predictable from Apple’s viewpoint, and that means they can write very specific optimisations around that hardware. It’s a benefit that Windows doesn’t entirely have, simply because the variety of hardware on offer means it’s all but impossible to program efficiently for all of it. No, I’m not saying Macs never crash. They do. But the Mac OS experience on an actual Mac versus that on a Hackintosh is quite markedly different.
The same is true in the iOS sphere as well. Only a couple of Pods and Phones to code for with a simple set of code bases? That gives you lots of room to code in ways that only make sense to that hardware, because it’s never going to run on other hardware. That gives Apple a potential edge when it comes to any processor, including dual core ones, and especially when using a processor they’ve used before. They can tweak the operating system to work as seamlessly as possible with the hardware, and it’d be foolish to think that there isn’t code sitting in iOS 5 right now directed right at that purpose.
Androids can beat Apples iphone 4s
That’s why a direct comparison between a dual core Android phone and a dual core Apple one isn’t quite as cut and dried as it might seem. Yes, both platforms have dual core options, but the way that the underlying code approaches them can be radically different; Apple’s control over its hardware platform means that it may be able to eke out more performance on its platform than the specifications suggest. If we were talking an iPhone running Gingerbread, it’d be an entirely different story. But to compare dual core phones for a second, if I was offered a Galaxy S II, HTC Sensation or LG Optimus 2X — all dual-core Android phones — I’d pick the Galaxy S II in a heartbeat, because in my own experience it’s the phone that gets the most out of its dual core processor. Same underlying operating system, but there are differences that change the eventual end user experience.
Optimisation is an argument that naturally enough cuts both ways; Apple’s control is both a blessing and a curse. They may get better performance out of a dual core part because they’re only writing for a limited set of hardware specifications, but at the same time the open nature of the Android platform allows for tweaking under the hood that’s harder to achieve with iOS. The work of teams producing custom ROMs does allow hardware to be tweaked for better performance and that shouldn’t be overlooked either. But to write the iPhone 4S off as simply playing catchup ignores one of Apple’s key market advantages.
The longest and the darkest Lunar Eclipse in 4 decades occured tonight. This lunar eclipse was visible on every continent except North America.During the eclipse,earth’s shadow completely covered the moon, blocking the sun rays from reaching the moon. The lunar eclipse occurred at 18:23 universal time (UT) (2:22 p.m. Eastern Time).
Partial eclipse begins: 18:23 UT Total eclipse begins: 19:23 UT Greatest eclipse: 20:13 UT Total eclipse ends: 21:03 UT Partial eclipse ends: 22:02 UT
This eclipse provides a rare opportunity to watch orange-red light from the moon because during a total lunar eclipse earth blocks direct light from the sun.However ,some indirect light from the earth’s atmosphere reaches the moon and it is reddened. Lunar eclipse is safe to watch with the naked eye.
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The best seat to watch this lunar eclipse are the Indian Ocean and Subcontinent,Eastern Africa,Western Australia,Mideast,Southeast Asia.
Not surprisingly, many businesses use Google’s AdSense platform to make money. It has given many publishers a tried-and-true monetization model to fall back on, so they can focus on the editorial side of the business.
For Google AdSense users, does it meet your expectations? Let us know why or why not.
Although Google has been very successful with its AdSense platform, it is known for targeting, primarily, large publishers. For this reason, Lijit Networks is aiming to provide an alternative to AdSense and reach out, specifically, to mid-sized publishers.
The company has provided publishers with audience engagement and analytics tools since 2006, but it added a monetization feature earlier this year. Since Q4 2010, transactions on the advertising platform have grown 74 percent. Lijit also recently closed a $10 million round of financing in order to expand its platform and compete directly with Google.
Todd Vernon, the CEO and founder of Lijit, told us that publishers, especially in the mid-sized marketplace, tell them that Google isn’t performing to its users’ expectations.
“What we hear, time and time again, is, ‘when there’s something wrong, I can’t get a hold of Google… they only provide me error messages… I can’t actually talk to a human,’” he said.
Because Lijit is reaching out to a niche market, it believes it can take on the advertising giant.
“At the end of the day, they’re [Google] vulnerable in this area,” pointed out Vernon. “Google’s not known for customer service,” he added.
As for how Lijit plans to take on this endeavor, Vernon said, “We just want to have more relationships with more publishers in niche content areas that we know how to monetize that others probably won’t do as good a job with.”
Life just got better for all YouTube loyalists. After a dull week, rife with updates on how to transfer videos from a slowly dying Google Videos onto an over-worked YouTube, the worst seems to be over. Pay and Watch!
YouTube has now officially entered the online movie rental space. The service that is all set to launch this week will charge users for streaming mainstream Hollywood movies. YouTube is poised to give the popular iTunes service a stiff competition. iTunes currently is the most popular paid video streaming service, and now with YouTube entering the space with a host of big names backing it; the competitor seems to have toughened overnight.
YouTube, to say, was in plans of launching its own video streaming service since long. But, it was in the process of getting in the biggest names in the market under its hood. YouTube has so far managed to get in studios like Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers and Universal, as also independent studios like Lionsgate and Kino Lorber. However, Paramount Pictures, Fox and Disney have not given in their consent to licensing their movies, as yet. Hollywood, however, is now optimistic about YouTube’s this move, since its being seen as an excellent revenue generating mode.
All the more crucial, since the revenues coming in from the home entertainment sector has been on a steady decline.
Revelations about how Apple iPhones and Google Android phones keep precise track of each user's whereabouts every day is sending shock waves through the tech and privacy communities.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.,sent separate letters late last week to Apple CEO Steve Jobs asking him to supply details about how and why iPhones and iPads compile and store detailed time-stamped logs of each user's location.
And Markey on Saturday called for a formal congressional investigation of both Apple and Google. "Unprotected personal location information could be a treasure trove for troublemakers," says Markey.
The letters to Jobs came after two British researchers, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, revealed their discovery of a location-logging mechanism quietly introduced by Apple for iPhones and iPads in early- to mid-2010.
On Friday, Google came under scrutiny. The Guardian disclosed the existence of a similar location-logging feature on Android phones, a discovery made by a Swiss researcher, Magnus Eriksson; and the Wall Street Journal verified evidence gathered by Los Angeles-based researcher Samy Kamkar, showing how most Android phones worldwide have been actively sending GPS location coordinates, as well as the coordinates of any nearby WiFi networks, back to Google for at least the past six months.
Apple did not respond to interview requests. Google's senior manager of public affais, Chris Gaither, said the company is not doing interviews. Instead, the search giant issued a brief statement confirming that location data is being transmitted back to Google servers but asserting that it refrains from tracing such data to specific individuals.
Meanwhile, the tech and privacy communities are abuzz with discussions. One big risk for Apple patrons is ifyour iPhone or iPad is lost or stolen, says IDC applications development analyst Al Hilwa. "It makes it super easy to come up with schemes to spy on users, such as people spying on spouses or bosses spying on employees," says Hilwa.
Apple and Google are in an intense competition to dominate one of tech's hottest new sectors: services pivoting around knowing the precise location of the consumer. Revenue derived from so-called location-based services are expected to swell to $8.3 billion by 2014, up from $2.6 billion in 2010, according to tech industry research firm, Gartner.
Allan, the British researcher, last week stumbled upon a file stored on the hard drive of his MacBook laptop containing 29,000 time-stamped locations—a log of everywhere he had traveled in the previous 300 days. The file originated on his iPhone and was automatically copied to his laptop when he synced the two devices.
Alan's research partner, Warden, created a software application that plots the time-stamped location data on an interactive map. The application is simple to download and free to use by any Mac owner. Warden is working on a version for people who sync iPhones to Windows PCs.
"We don't know exactly what triggers the logging," says Warden. "We see logging happening with intervals as frequent as every couple of minutes to much longer, and we don't know what the pattern is."
It is not clear whether Apple intends to somehow make this data available to location-based marketeers. Location data is being increasingly used to personalize online ads, to help parents keep track of their teens, and to help prevent mobile payment scams, says Chenxi Wang, cybersecurity analyst at Forrester Research.
"None of these scenarios justify storing a year's worth of location data," says Wang. "It continues to surprise me how companies always elect the privacy-invasive features as default."
Kankar, the Los Angeles researcher, says he has discovered that all recently purchased Android phones are set up to continually report specific GPS coordinates as well as the coordinates of WiFi networks in nearby homes and businesses back to Google.
He says Google can correlate timing and frequency of phone usage to pinpoint an Android owner's home address. "If your phone is at the same location during night hours, they know where you live," says Kankar. "If your phone location is on the move, they can guess that you're in a car and even calculate how fast your car is moving."
Kankar says Android handsets also continually track coordinates of any nearby WiFi systems, even those that are encrypted. "If you have an Android phone, Google knows where you are," says Kankar. "Even if you don't own an Android phone, but your neighbor does, Google can triangulate who you are by tracking your wireless network."
The only way to disable such tracking by your Android phone is to disable the GPS and Wireless functions, he says.
But most people, especially those under 30, aren't apt to disable cutting-edge features, says Fran Maier, president of TRUSTe, which certifies website privacy programs.
On Wednesday, TRUSTe plans to release survey results showing 44% of 18- to 20-year-olds say they feel secure and in control when using their mobile devices. "Privacy is a big deal now, even among younger people," says Maier. "But they believe they're smarter and more adept at managing their information than older people."
Even so, Sen. Franken notes in his letter to Jobs that "there are numerous ways" location data "can be abused by criminals and bad actors." And Rep. Markey asks Jobs if he is concerned about how the "wide array of precise location data logged by these devices can be used to track minors, exposing them to potential harm."
Tech analysts and privacy experts say Google is likely to face similar questions. "There appears to be this enormous industry operating behind closed doors with business models premised on the collection of massive amounts of detailed information," says Hilwa. "Only governmental regulatory bodies can inject sanity back into this state of affairs."
On Friday YouTube officially began the initial roll out of YouTube Live, the new live streaming service that will offer live video capabilities on the site. Starting this off is the introduction of the new browse page youtube.com/live, where you can tune in to live events, subscribe to live-streaming partners, and add events to your calendar.
According to a YouTube blog post issued yesterday, the plan is to gradually roll out the live beta platform, allowing partners with accounts in “good standing” to start streaming live content to the site.
“The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead. In order to ensure a great live stream viewing experience, we’ll roll this offering out incrementally over time.”
This is not the first time that live streams have been incorporated in the Google-owned video site. Live concerts such as The National’s performance back in May, interviews, and sports events have been streamed in the past; however, up until this point these have been singular events rather than continuous live stream channels and have not been available to the vast majority of YouTube account partners.
This roll out follows The Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that Google Inc. is possibly planning on investing as much as $100 million in the site with the hope of commissioning low-cost content exclusively for the Internet. Many have speculated that this money will be pumped primarily into this new live streaming project, as this new feature will theoretically allow the web service to recreate itself as a happy medium between user-generated content and broadcast and cable television streaming services where users can find a cache of professional grade original Web videos. Google’s ultimate goal would seem to be to continue providing the same type of content it has for the past seven years while expanding their services to include the ever growing demand for video streaming services, ultimately making YouTube more competitive with sites like Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix.
This move to live streaming will likely be a big hit with users and push YouTube back into the online video spotlight. While it has not yet been announced if YouTube Live will be accessible on smart phones and tablets through its app, it is likely that this will be the case. The ramifications of this will be revolutionary, as the slight delay between recording world events and posting them on the Internet will be removed, allowing people to witness things like the Japan tsunami, the turmoil in the Middle East, key political speeches and rallies, or cats sucker punching dogs in the face at precisely the moment that they are happening. Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix can’t say that about their “premium content.” If this streaming service roll out is successful and lives up to its potential, it could potentially change fundamentally how we see user-generated content both in terms of entertainment as well as news and information.
However Larry Page decides to lead Google, one thing is for sure: He's not going to be Eric Schmidt 2.0.
Larry PageThat's the word coming from industry analysts just days after Page became the CEO of Google. With Schmidt stepping down to become the online powerhouse's executive chairman, Page, a co-founder, is back in the big chair.
And everyone is expecting some significant changes.
"It's very reasonable that Larry is going to sit down and he's going to reorganize the company," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial, a New York-based investment firm. "Larry is taking over, and he's likely to make some broad changes and he's likely to do it relatively quickly."
Actually, those changes came immediately.
Page officially took over as CEO on Monday -- the very day that Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's product chief, announced that he plans to resign. By all accounts a highly crucial cog in the Google machine, Rosenberg is expected to exit the company in the coming months. At this point, it's unclear who will replace him, or if he will be replaced at all.
Also on Monday, Google announced that it is bidding $900 million in cash for thousands of patents that Nortel is auctioning off as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.
Obviously, the decision to make such a huge bid was in the works for some time, and Page must have had a hand in the move while he was transitioning into the CEO's office. And it's not as if Page had been uninvolved with the company while Schmidt was in charge.
Schmidt, Page and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have been the triumvirate behind the company's rise to the dominant position it holds today.
The difference, however, is that while Page has been focused on innovation, Schmidt was the one making sure that Google was making money and that its stock price stayed up.
Now the weight of both concerns -- innovation and business success -- will fall more solidly on Page.
"[Page] has good vision. He's very much a strong intellectual. He's a challenging type," said Gillis, adding that Google is a much different beast than it was when Page first ran it as a startup.
"Remember: It's a bigger ship to turn. It's 200 people versus [24,000 employees today]. It's private company versus a public company. This is a lot different," he said.
And word is that Page would like Google to again be run like a hungry young startup -- with less bureaucracy and more innovation, and with fewer middle managers and more engineers.
That means there's a potential management shake-up in the offing.
Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, said he wouldn't be surprised if some middle managers were let go in the coming months -- a move that he thinks would be a big mistake.
"Google is an engineering company and by nature it would be predominantly engineers," Enderle said. "However, a firm made up predominantly of engineers would lack the skills and depth the company would need."
"Google already is excessively engineering-focused which is part of why they haven't been able to avoid [angering] governments, and why their image is declining," he said.
Others think Page just might be able to inject exactly what Google needs -- a dose of excitement and innovation.
"As a co-founder steeped in engineering and innovation, Page is the perfect type of CEO for a company looking to recapture its startup mojo and compete in a predominantly cloud-driven marketplace where speed in engineering matters more than generating investor buzz," said Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis.
"Page can engender a true sense of unity and leadership where previously there was confusion and even infighting between the founders and their appointed CEO, Eric Schmidt," he said.
However, Shimmin warns that Page should be careful to not pinpoint his focus on innovation.
"Believe it or not, I think Google should slow its rate of innovation, focusing not so much on wild ideas such as self-driving cars and instead focus on improving its existing portfolio," he said. "For example, Google Apps should see enough investment to make it a truly unified, mature and enterprise-centric platform capable of beating rivals IBM and Microsoft feature for feature."
Both Enderle and Gillis said Page needs to deal with the company's trust issues.
"Google is at a crossroads," Enderle said, explaining that it appears to be "unfocused, increasingly difficult to work with for partners, and a problem to correct for governments."
"The company's image has degraded to a point where few would trust them, and trust is critical to much of what they intend to accomplish in the future," Enderle said. "It is well past time the founders looked into the mirror and realized they have become a company they wouldn't choose to work with. Fixing that problem should be their highest priority."
Google is promising a few improvements to its online ad system to help stop the spate of advertisers hawking counterfeit items.
In a blog posted yesterday, the search giant tallied the number of advertisers using AdWords at more than 1 million spread across at least 190 different countries. As a result, finding specific accounts that advertise phony products can be a challenge. Google was able to shut down around 50,000 such accounts just in the second half of 2010, but the company admits that more needs to be done. To help stop the proliferation of fake items sold through AdWords, Google is promising three new improvements to its online ad system. Offering an online form in which brand owners can file complaints over counterfeit goods, Google now says it will respond to such complaints within 24 hours. The company is also pledging to do a better job of catching AdSense ads that link to phony items. AdSense allows other companies to earn revenue by placing Google ads on their own Web sites. Specifically, Google says it will work more closely with brand owners to catch advertisers who don't play by the rules and will kick them off the AdSense program. Finally, Google has set up a new help page for people to read the policies against counterfeit goods and report complaints over different types of abuse. Over the years, Google has been the target of lawsuits by brand owners upset about the use of certain keywords in AdWords, in part arguing that such a policy allows non-brand owners to more easily advertise counterfeit products. Google has always maintained that it works with brand owners and is quick to clamp down on any misuse of its ad system. Following a series of lawsuits , Google was cleared last year in a suit filed by luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton and other companies. The European Court of Justice found that Google was not liable for violating the trademarks of advertisers by offering keywords identical to those trademarks. But the court did find that Google is obligated to remove such ads if the brand owners complain that their rights have been violated.
Google has accused the Chinese government of disrupting its email service Gmail and clarified that there were no technical issues with the service or the website from its end. Gmail has been made inaccessible in China as a part of intensified Internet crackdown, reported The Associated Press. Google, in an official statement, noted, "There is no technical issue on our side; we have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail."
As per a Google spokesperson, China is the world's most populous Internet Market and users have been reporting about the intermittent access to Gmail since January. Users face major problems in accessing the Gmail homepage, sending emails and also the instant messaging. The blockage is allegedly a the part of the existing web censorship in China and is more sophisticated since it doesn't block the service entirely but just makes it annoyingly intermittent.
In the past, Google's Gmail snooping issue and the cyber-attacks within China has soured the relations between the company and China. Now, this controlled disruption will certainly make Google think over its presence in China. The company has already moved its search engine domains for Chinese language from mainland China to Hong Kong.
As of now, the Chinese government hasn't responded to Google's allegation but we expect a denial as response soon.
"Alam Ara" debuted 80 yearsago, and featured the great-grandfather of two oftoday's top stars. Google users in India were given a surprise cinema lesson Monday with a “Google Doodle” on the search engine's India homepage, celebrating the March 14, 1931 release of Alam Ara , India's first talking picture. Based on a play, Alam Ara was a fantasy tale about an aging king and the rivalry between his two queens as to who would bear theking's heir. Director Ardeshir Irani raced tocomplete Alam Ara before several other planned sound films to create history as the first Indian talkie.
Among the film's stars was iconic actor Prithviraj Kapoor , whosefamily members are still an integral part of today's Bollywoodsuch as his great-grandchildren, actor Ranbir Kapoor and actress Kareena Kapoor . But not a single print of Alam Ara is in existence after a fire destroyed India's National Film Archives in 2003 in Pune city nearMumbai. Alam Ara received a massive response, with police called in to control the stampede at Mumbai'sMajestic Theatre.
The movie ran for two hours and four minutes and used a Tanar Sound System to record the dialogue. The film was historic for spawningthe first soundtrack and first song of Indian cinema, unfurling Indian filmdom's strong tradition of featuring music, a tradition that is as vibrant today in the age of MTV.
