Samsung and its rivals show off the future of TVs

Edward C. Baig
January 7, 2013
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2013/01/07/baig-samsung-ces-2013/1813595

Tech titans Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook rarely come out of hiding at the annual International CES. And after years on center stage, Microsoft has pretty much applied for the CES equivalent of the witness protection program.

So with apologies to a formidable list of consumer electronics show stalwarts that includes LG, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba, Samsung is arguably the biggest of the Big Cheese consumer electronics mainstays left exhibiting at these proceedings.

Above all else, CES is still about televisions. Samsung, as much as any of its rivals, serves as a proxy for where the industry hopes to take you. The path leads to Ultra High-Definition models that boast four times the pixel count of today's 1080p HDTVs. Gee, it was only a few years ago that you cozied up to the thin — and yes, affordable — HDTV that now graces your living room.

Make no mistake, Samsung's upcoming 85-inch flagship UN85S9 UHD TV takes your breath away. It's just that you may have to take out a small mortgage to own this stunning TV, not that you can even buy it yet. Samsung isn't saying what it will cost or when precisely it will go on sale, but says the model will ship this year. I should also point out that there's precious little content out there to take advantage of all those extra pixels — a familiar chicken and egg scenario that slowed the launch of early HDTVs.

The splashy cutting-edge sets are expected to fetch in the $20,000 range, says tech and media analyst Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications. Still, if UHDs go the way of HDTVs — and myriad other consumer electronics categories before them — prices might drop sooner than may now seem likely, though I wouldn't bet a lot on the prospect. (I am in Vegas, after all.)

Samsung executive Joe Stinziano calls the TV a "statement piece" -- to my mind, code-language for, "if you have to ask what it costs, you can't afford it". He says the pixel density of the panels in the set is very expensive to manufacture.

Fortunately, the new TV flaunts other features that will be available on less-expensive 2013 models, notably a newly designed Smart Hub interface. Through the early years of Smart TVs, the various TV makers have done a generally mediocre job when it comes to screen interfaces, perhaps one reason behind all the talk of an eventual Apple-branded television.

My initial impression of Samsung's new Smart Hub is positive, though, as always, you can't really judge these things until you use it outside the boundaries of a trade show.

Samsung's Smart Hub consists of five panels: The "On TV" panel shows the channel you're watching now in a window that's adjacent to a half-dozen smaller windows representing other shows airing at the same time. Below are thumbnails revealing shows that are coming up. The visible content is based on Samsung recommendations generated from your viewing habits.

A "Movie & TV" panel, also based on your viewing history, reveals on-demand flicks, movies available to you as a subscriber to certain services, and material you may have purchased.

Other panels cover your personal "Photos, Videos and Movies," "Apps" (where you'll find Netflix, Hulu Plus, Spotify, Pandora, etc.) and "Social" (feeds and videos from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on).

You can manipulate the Smart Hub with a new remote that has a touch panel, as well as left-right, up-down slide bar controls.

Samsung also says the voice interaction in its latest TVs — advancing the state of the art from last year — has improved to the point where the TV understands complete sentences. You'll be able to say "I want to watch CSI" and the TV will serve up all the likely matches. Or you might say, "go to South Park," or, "go to ESPN," since the TV can distinguish the name of a show from a channel.

Inside the UHD TV (and other new models) is a quad-core processor that Samsung claims is 3.6 times faster than last year's dual-core models. No you won't change the channels any faster. But you can speed up the time when you stop watching a stream from one content provider and start searching on

It's fair to say that all the consumer electronics companies with a diverse portfolio of products at this show want you to keep it in the family. So it goes with Samsung. If you have Samsung phones, tablets or home appliances, for example, you can take advantage of "AllShare" features that tie the TV to compatible devices. Via an onscreen TV app, you might be able to monitor the wash cycle of your Samsung washer-dryer or change the temperature of the air conditioner without having to pause the TV content. Samsung will let you stream from the TV to one of its mobile phones.

Moreover, Samsung will soon start selling the Smart Evolution kits it announced at last year's CES, which will enable folks to upgrade certain 2012 (but not older) models to the quadcore generation. You get the new remote control as part of the kit, and can add the latest Smart Hub interface. The kit is likely to cost between $200 and $500, Samsung says.

Not that there's anything wrong with your current HDTV, which you'll be able to safely enjoy watching for quite some time. Samsung expects it to take several years before UHDs begin to overtake today's popular HDTVs. But UHD does reveal a lot about where Samsung, and its industry counterparts who are pushing the same or similar technologies, are directing the near and longer-term future of television.

The top 10 tech 'fails' of 2012

Doug Gross
Fri December 28, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/tech/web/tech-fails-2012/index.html

Well, you can't win 'em all.

In 2012, we saw big tech advances. Smartphones got bigger. Tablets got smaller. Social media played a role in everything from a presidential election to disaster relief.

But with advances come clunkers.

When you're in a field that demands near-constant innovation and unprecedented levels of creativity, sometimes even the most successful players are going to shoot and miss.

So, at the risk of playing Scrooge in this season of good will, here we come to wallow in it. Because, let's face it: The Internet loves a good fail.

Behold the top 10 tech "fails" of 2012, with wishes for happier days ahead to all involved.

Apple Maps

Apple's unofficial slogan, "It Just Works," took a beating on this one.

Along with the rollout of the much anticipated iPhone 5 in September, Apple overhauled iOS, the operating system that runs the phone, its iPad and other mobile devices. A much-hyped feature of the change was Apple's first effort at its own mapping app -- after dumping rival Google's map software.

The result was so bad that a few days later Apple's CEO was essentially telling customers to use Google Maps.

Entire cities appeared in the wrong place. Landmarks such as the Washington Monument showed up submerged in bodies of water, and big chunks of the globe appeared as roadless wastelands.

"At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers," CEO Tim Cook wrote in a rare apology. "With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."

It was a little more than a month later when Scott Forstall, vice president in charge of iOS, was ousted from the company, reportedly, in part, for not wanting to apologize for Maps.

The company has been gradually improving Maps, but as recently as this month Australian police complained that an Apple Maps glitch could endanger motorists by mislocating a city of 30,000 people in the middle of the outback.

Facebook's IPO

Everybody uses Facebook. And everybody likes to make money. So everybody's going to gobble up Facebook stock, right?

So went the conventional thinking -- at least among those of us who spend more time thinking about mobile phones than mutual funds. But on Wall Street? Not so much.

It's hard to remember a stock opening more hyped than Facebook's when it hit the market in May. The stock began the day worth about $38. Then, after what everyone predicted to be a dynamic day of trading for the social media superstar, it closed at ... well ... about $38.

It wouldn't take long for the pinstripe-suit types to decide it wasn't even worth that. Facebook's stock bottomed out in September, falling below $18. Since then, it's been steadily rebounding and currently sells for about $28.

Facebook says it has solid financial plans for the future. And the stock may well keep climbing, eventually turning a profit for folks who bought early.

But that fateful day in May will be a reminder that Wall Street and Silicon Valley don't always play well together.

Airtime

When the man who created Napster and helped launch Facebook talks, the tech industry listens.

And when Sean Parker and partner Shawn Fanning tease something new called Airtime, techies fall all over themselves to see what the next great innovation will be.

But then, at a fancy launch event featuring celebrities such as Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg, Parker announces that it's ... basically, a random Web chat tool.

Cue the collective, "Huh?"

It didn't help that, at that fancy event, Airtime crashed over and over again. Or that folks had a hard time seeing how it would be different than Chatroulette (although Parker promised more users would actually be wearing pants).

In October, Parker admitted that Airtme, launched with more than $33 million in backing, had just 10,000 active users. (That's $3,300 spent per user, if you're scoring along at home.)

"Running a startup is like eating glass," he said at the All Things D conference. "You just start to like the taste of your own blood."

Ouch.

Online coupons

"These aren't your grandma's coupons!" the digital generation so brashly declared.

With their mobile apps and irreverent style, daily-deal offerings such as Groupon and Living Social were all the rage as 2012 dawned.

Now? Um, not so much.

Groupon, perhaps the best-known player in the field, watched its value plummet 79% in 2012. Its stock value dropped about three-quarters since opening in November 2011 as high-profile investors washed their hands of it.

And this is the company Google reportedly tried to buy for $6 billion in 2010.

LivingSocial, meanwhile, announced last month it was laying off 400 people. That's after announcing months of revenue losses.

So what happened? Inbox fatigue made some users stop checking the deals. A glut of offers you don't care about (pottery classes?) can make your eyes glaze over. And some businesses quit making offers, saying they never saw the promised returns on their investment.

Nexus Q

When Google gets something right, they get it really, really right.

Redefining Web search? Yep. World's leading mobile system? Check. A car that drives itself? Vroom!

But some of the Big G's outings in the gadget world have hit with a thud. Enter ... the Nexus Q.

The size and shape of a Magic Eight Ball, the Nexus Q is (or was ... it's hard to say) a media streamer that uses Android to play audio and video. It's also made in the United States, no small thing in a world where virtually all gadgets come from China.

Unfortunately, in the grand tradition of Google Wave, nobody really knew what it was when it was released in June. Its release date was pushed back and, eventually, Google just gave everybody who pre-ordered a free one.

The Q has not officially been canned. But on Google's online store, the never-released gadget is listed as "not available at this time."

Stop Online Piracy Act

The new law was supposed to be about fighting online piracy. Who's going to be against that, right?

Answer: Pretty much the whole Internet.

Members of Congress sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and related bills to make it easier to shut down websites that illegally share music, movies and other content.

But opponents argued it went too far and could end up shutting down legitimate sites while stifling free expression in the process.

Unfortunately for backers of SOPA, Web heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia joined the fight against the bill. Sites went black on January 18 to raise awareness. Members of communities such as Reddit put intense pressure on lawmakers (including soon-to-be GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan) until they dropped their support or went on record opposing the bill.

The unprecedented backlash eventually caused supporters to shelve SOPA, and quite possibly ushered in a new age of Web activism.

'Social discovery' apps

If the first wave of social networking was about hooking up with friends, the next wave would be about meeting strangers -- or so the thinking went.

Tech-world pundits predicted a new wave of "social discovery" apps that would change the way we meet people. The basic idea was that, by using phones' GPS, users could see who else was nearby and then meet up with other users with shared friends or similar interests.

"If we get this right, I cannot think of a bigger thing to be working on right now," Paul Davison, CEO of the app Highlight, told CNN in June. "We can take billions and billions of dollars."

Significantly, he also chose not to tell a reporter how many users the app had at the time.

Banjo and Glancee were apps that did something similar. Others, such as Skout and Grindr, were even more specific -- they let you hunt down willing partners for a quick hookup.

But here's the thing -- some users, particularly women, found the apps a little creepy.

OK, so you know that somebody sitting in the same bar as you likes the Pixies, "Firefly," the fantasy stylings of George R.R. Martin and the Atlanta Braves. Are you really just going to start waving around your smartphone to get their attention?

Sure, they've got good taste. But they still might be jerks.

Color

It was supposed to be a tech-world slam-dunk. Instead, it became a cautionary tale about what some feel could become a tech "bubble."

Color, a photo-sharing mobile app, stoked excitement in the startup community that was virtually unrivaled. Before it had a single user, Color had raised $41 million from investors. So certain were its Silicon Valley creators that, reportedly, they turned down a $200 million buyout offer from Google.

With much fanfare, Color launched in March 2011. But users soon complained that the app, designed to share photos with the people around you, often didn't find anyone for them to share with. Its creators were forced to announce they were working on a major overhaul on the same day it was released.

Color tallied about 1 million users at its peak and, more recently, was reportedly down to about 100,000. Compare that to the roughly 100 million users of photo app Instagram (it had about 27 million when Facebook bought it last year), and you see the problem.

Color will be shutting down on New Year's Eve.

Zynga

It reads like an old VH1 "Behind the Music" episode.

"Zynga was riding high. Love them or hate them, its games like "Mafia Wars" and "FarmVille" were everywhere, clogging up Facebook pages and spurring millions of bored casual gamers to pay real cash for virtual cows. Then, it all came crumbling down."

OK, maybe "crumbling down" is an overstatement. But things in The 'Ville definitely didn't go Zynga's way in 2012.

In October, Zynga announced it was laying off 5% of its employees, shutting down its studio in Boston and proposing the closure of others in Japan and England.

(It would be entirely cynical to suggest Zynga hoped to bury that news by making the announcement during Apple's much-hyped iPad Mini event. So we won't suggest that here.)

Facebook, which gets a cut when people spend money on games such as "FarmVille," said that income from Zynga was down 20% over last year.

And, like unskilled mafia warriors, Zynga shot itself in the foot again in March when it bought the company that makes mobile game "Draw Something" for an eye-popping $180 million. But fascination with "Draw Something" dropped off fast. When's the last time you played?

Twitter twits

OK, so you can post something stupid anywhere. But there's something about Twitter's rapid-fire, 140-character bursts that brings out the stupid in people.

From companies embarrassing themselves to celebrities behaving badly, it's hard to name just one Twitter doofus. But here are a few nominees:

• Chris Brown, the hip-hop star, consistently used Twitter to make himself look like a foul-mouthed rage monster. Instead of thanking fans after winning a Grammy, he launched a profanity-laced bromide at his "haters." Then there were the misogynistic, scatological insults he hurled at comedian-critic Jenny Johnson before "quitting" Twitter. (He's back.)

• McDonald's thought it would get a little of that social media love it had been hearing about in January when it created the #McDstories hashtag -- asking customers to share their favorite McDonald's memories. Then it found out what happens when you give the Internet open access to your advertising effort. McDonald's yanked the campaign after just two hours and countless food-horror stories about fingernails, insects and bouts of food poisoning.

• Spike Lee was, like many Twitter users, angered by the killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Tweeting the home address of shooter George Zimmerman would have been questionable enough. But Lee mistakenly tweeted out the address of a couple who have a son by that name. They had to leave their home after being besieged by reporters and threats. Lee would later apologize and "reach an agreement" with the aggrieved family.

• Greek triple jumper Paraskevi Papachristou was on her way to the Olympics when she tried a little ill-advised Twitter humor. With so many African Olympians in London, "the West Nile mosquitoes will at least eat homemade food!" she wrote. Her tweet was quickly criticized as racially insensitive, and Greece's Olympic Committee barred her from participating in the Games.

• Oprah Winfrey had been gushing for weeks about how much she loved the new Microsoft Surface tablet, culminating in this tweet: "Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts." Unfortunately for her, those words were followed by ... "via Twitter for iPad."

The top 12 tech stories of 2012

Heather Kelly
Fri December 28, 2012
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/27/tech/web/top-tech-stories-2012/

Facebook struggled with its new life as a publicly traded company, and Instagram, the photo-sharing network it acquired in April, was dragged along for the ride.

There were inspiring stories, such as the Internet coming together to protest anti-piracy legislation. And there was darker news, like the Israeli military live-tweeting its strikes against Gaza.

And as always, the world's dominant and most closely watched tech company was all over the news. Apple did a little bit of everything in 2012, from hit new products (the iPad Mini) to high-profile failures (Apple Maps) to some old-fashioned courtroom drama in its patent war with Samsung.

Here are our picks for the top 12 tech stories of 2012. What did we leave out? Let us know in the comment section below.

Microsoft's big push

This was the year Microsoft took a big, bold and surprisingly fun step with a new version of Windows, an updated mobile operating system and its very own iPad rival.

The company, best known for its efficient but stodgy desktop software, needed to do something fresh to get customers' attention in 2012 and started with its flagship product. Windows 8 is a complete overhaul of the Windows operating system. Microsoft nixed the Start button and mixed a playful touchscreen interface with a more traditional desktop experience that runs on tablets, traditional computers, and hybrid machines.

The company also made a leap into the hardware market, releasing its first tablet, the Microsoft Surface, which ran a truncated version of the new Windows 8 operating system. And finally, there was Windows Phone 8, a major revamp of its smartphone operating system, which Microsoft hopes can compete with Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

It's still too soon to judge any of the new releases as successes or failures, but give Microsoft credit for taking chances.

SOPA backlash

In January, a pair of anti-piracy bills united the Internet in outrage. The proposed legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, or PIPA, would have restricted access to sites associated with pirated content, including the search engines and ad networks that do business with them.

The Internet cried censorship, and on January 18 some of the most popular sites blacked out their pages in protest. Reddit, Craigslist, Boing Boing, The Oatmeal, the English-language version of Wikipedia and thousands of other sites went dark. Even Google put a black censorship box over its logo. There were also petitions and organized boycotts of companies that supported the bills.

The protests worked, as both SOPA and PIPA were shelved. It was an impressive demonstration of the power of an organized Internet community.

Live-tweeting war

Violence and war have long been documented on Twitter and other social networks -- typically by journalists and by regular people on the ground (notably the Pakistani witness to the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden).

But in November, the Israeli military took this concept to a new level. During its conflict with Palestinian forces in Gaza, the Israel Defense Force tweeted updates, including the news it had "eliminated" Hamas leader Ahmed Jabari. The military arm of Hamas responded on Twitter with its own provocations.

The back-and-forth between the warring sides signaled a jarring evolution in how war is broadcast in real time.

iPhone 5 and Apple Maps stumble

Every Apple hardware release is a big news story, starting with rumors months in advance and peaking with a well-oiled Apple press event, followed by usually glowing reviews and huge sales numbers. But in 2012, Apple made a major misstep when it released the iPhone 5 and its new operating system, iOS 6.

The company dropped the Google-powered maps that had come pre-installed on every iPhone since 2007. In its place, Apple introduced its own mapping app. Apple Maps looked stunning, with 3-D graphics and neat features like Flyover and turn-by-turn directions. All it was missing was transit directions and accuracy -- the maps were riddled with mistaken locations and outdated information.

The resulting criticism inspired an apology from CEO Tim Cook and led to an executive shakeup at Apple. Customers turned to third-party map apps until Google finally released an iOS version of its popular maps in December.

Apple vs. Samsung

It was the biggest tech trial of the year. Two of the top phone and tablet manufacturers went to war when Apple accused Samsung of infringing on its iPad and iPhone patents for a variety of tablets and smartphones. The drama culminated in a federal jury trial over the summer that offered a rare peek into how notoriously secretive Apple operates.

The story became huge because of the large amount of money at stake and the implications that its verdict would have on Samsung's business and the Android platform.

The jury decided in Apple's favor, awarding the company just over $1 billion in damages. But the case is far from over. Lawyers for both sides will continue bickering over potential appeals for months and possibly years to come.

Facebook's botched IPO

It was the most anticipated IPO of the year, and one of the largest ever for a tech company. Social-media darling Facebook looked primed for a big public opening: The company was valued at $104 billion, snapped up popular photo-sharing app Instagram and was still growing.

But then an array of problems and misjudgments led to a botched IPO in May, and the company's stock plummeted. The initial offer price of $38 was too high, too many shares were issued, its opening day was marred by Nasdaq's technical glitches, and underwriter Morgan Stanley was fined for improperly influencing share sales.

The stock price dropped significantly, hitting a low of $17.55 on September 4. Facebook is still struggling to recover some of its early-2012 luster.

The Instagram boom

Instagram started out scrappy two years ago as a fun little app for sharing sepia-shaded photos with friends. But when its user base skyrocketed, Facebook bought it for $1 billion in cash and shares of Facebook stock. That amount later dropped to $735 million as the value of Facebook shares plummeted.

By September, Instagram had more than 100 million users. The app capped off its big year with a rite of passage for social networks: a bungled update to its terms of service that sparked user outrage and led to a hasty backtrack by founder Kevin Systrom.

Instagram's challenge for 2013 is to figure out how to grow its free service into a business that makes money so that Facebook can begin to get its money's worth.

Megaupload and Kim Dotcom

The Megaupload case would have been mildly interesting on its own. A popular file-sharing company and its various sites were shut down by the F.B.I for piracy. But when Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom was arrested in January at his lavish New Zealand estate, he went from unknown entrepreneur to a flamboyantly rich cult hero.

Dotcom (he legally changed his last name from Schmitz in 2005) did what any self-respecting boy video-game nerd would do with millions of dollars. He bought a yacht, helicopter, luxury cars and motorcycles. He lived with his model wife in a $24 million rented mansion in New Zealand where he spent hours playing "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," earning a spot as the top-ranked player in the world.

But after Dotcom was jailed and his assets were seized, he slowly emerged as a leader for Internet freedom activists who thought he was unfairly targeted. He's still fighting the charges and using his newfound fame to launch new projects. His current plans include a new file-sharing site that encrypts all its files, and a streaming music service called Megabox.

Mid-sized tablets take off

It was the rare case of Apple following a trend instead of setting it. Apple introduced its 7.9-inch iPad Mini in October to take on its new rivals in the tablet market: cheaper 7-inch devices from Google and Amazon. While the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 were only selling modestly compared to the iPad, Apple quickly recognized the growing demand for a smaller, more portable device.

The iPad Mini proved especially notable because Apple's late CEO, Steve Jobs, famously stated a 7-inch tablet would never make it in the market because it was "too big to compete with a smartphone; too small to compete with an iPad." This may have been one of those rare cases in which Jobs was wrong.

Nintendo launches Wii U

In November, Nintendo released a new version of its popular Wii game console, which while groundbreaking when launched in 2006 was badly in need of a refresh.

The Wii U's most novel feature is a touchscreen tablet controller called a GamePad, which communicates with the main console. Inside the tablet are motion control sensors, speakers, a camera, buttons and other bells and whistles -- all of which the gamer uses to interact with what's happening on the larger screen.

It's a bold move for the company and brings a new perspective to console gaming, although the Wii U has received mixed reviews so far.

Yahoo hires Marissa Mayer

Aging Internet giant Yahoo was facing slumping revenues and internal strife in July when it hired Google exec Marissa Mayer as its new chief executive. The hire made headlines for many reasons: Mayer was a bold choice that showed Yahoo was serious about shaking things up. She was also young, a Silicon Valley power player, and a woman who was expecting her first child.

There was much media hand-wringing over her pregnancy, with some pundits wondering aloud whether Mayer could juggle a newborn baby and a demanding new job. Many saw her as a role model for working mothers.

But when the news settled, the real question returned: Could Mayer save the floundering Yahoo? So far she has shaken up Yahoo's executive team, given employee morale a much-needed boost and begun to improve the company's mobile offerings, including a stunning new Flickr app.

It will take a while to properly gauge her impact, but investors seem optimistic. Yahoo's stock price has risen $4 a share since her hiring was announced.

Tech's role in the presidential election

Technology issues such as net neutrality weren't discussed much during the 2012 presidential election, but tech played a huge role in rallying supporters and getting out the vote. President Obama, arguably the most tech-savvy of U.S. presidents, went on Google Plus and Reddit to take questions from voters.

And both his campaign and that of his GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, sent social media messages almost daily in attempts to sway media reports and public opinion.

But the most impressive use of tech took place behind the scenes, where both sides used new and powerful computer databases to target voters. The Romney campaign's get-out-the-vote program, called Orca, suffered technical glitches on Election Day and was perceived to have been outflanked by Obama campaign software which compiled massive amounts of data on voters and dispatched volunteers to pinpoint locations across the country.

Samsung & Apple Now Account for 86% of Smartphone Industry Growth

Samsung and Apple Now Account for 86% of Smartphone Industry Growth
Samsung and Apple have proven to be the only smartphone makers hanging strong in a highly-competitive market.
Michael Comeau
Jan 27, 2012
http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/smartphone-market-share-q4-2011-smartphone/1/27/2012/id/39068

Does a rising tide lift all ships?

In some cases maybe, but in the smartphone-manufacturing world, it's becoming increasingly apparent that two companies are overpowering the competition.

Now, we all know that the two superpowers in smartphone operating systems are Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

Apple's iPhones are obviously the only phones using iOS, and as evidenced by the company's spectacular fiscal first-quarter earnings report, they are selling like crazy. To be exact, Apple sold a whopping 37 million units during the December 2011 quarter, a year-over-year increase of 128%.

Over in Android territory, results for the hardware makers haven't been hot across the board. Motorola Mobility, which is set to be acquired by Google, lowered fourth-quarter guidance in early January as its smartphone sales rose by just 8.2%. And Motorola hasn't been the only Android smartphone maker to disappoint. Former hotshot HTC also saw dramatically slowing sales through the holiday season.

Elsewhere in the industry, Research In Motion remains on the ropes, and Nokia's still losing share.

However, Korea electronics giant Samsung just proved that Apple still has one tough competitor left on the hardware side, and the numbers show that the two companies are dividing the smartphone world up between them.

Samsung just reported its fourth-quarter earnings results, and despite some weakness in areas like LCD panels, Samsung is more than hanging tough within the smartphone world.

Samsung's Android-powered Galaxy phone line appears to have squeezed out much of its Android competition, allowing it to survive the assault of the iPhone 4S, which was the first iPhone to debut in the fourth quarter.

Samsung didn't report unit sales numbers, but the research firm Strategy Analytics estimated that Samsung sold 36.5 million smartphones in Q4, equaling a 241% year-over-year increase. In fact, while Apple sold more units, Samsung's growth rate was actually far greater.

Regardless, Apple's and Samsung's combined fourth-quarter market share was 47.4%, up from 26.7% the year before.

Put another way, as the two titans' sales rose a combined 173%, versus a miserable 10% for the remaining players.

Put a third way, the two companies accounted for an insane 86% of the industry's unit growth in the quarter.

Which of these guys will ultimately win?

It doesn't really matter. Given how fast the rest of the competition is falling off, there's plenty of money for them to split.

Doh! The top 10 tech 'fails' of 2011

Doug Gross, CNN Thu December 29, 2011
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/29/tech/web/2011-tech-fails/index.html
Netflix's short-lived plan to split itself into two services didn't go over so well this year. Qwikster?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The highs were high but the lows were lower in the tech world in 2011
U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner makes our top 10 list for using Twitter to send lewd photos
PlayStation outage, "Duke Nukem Forever" and failed tablets also made the cut
It was a rough year for RIM and its BlackBerry, with a handful of "fails"

(CNN) -- Can't win 'em all, can you?

The highs were pretty high in the tech world in 2011, as new gadgets, updates and advances delighted the masses. I mean, Facebook made a change that most people (so far) seemed to actually like. What are the odds?

But the lows were lower. For every moment of digital bliss, it seemed, there was a clunker of equal or greater magnitude.

So, who are we to not rub salt in the wounds of those who got it oh-so-wrong this year?

In fairness, some of these "Doh!" moments came from folks who had otherwise good years. And nobody, not even perennial tech darling Apple, is perfect. (One hard-working journalist even had to write this very story twice after he accidentally deleted it and was forced to start over. Sweet, sweet irony.).

Sure, tech successes are nice. But these social-media miscues, foot-in-mouth e-moves and other digital duds gave us more to talk about in 2011.

Here are our 2011 "Tech Fails of the Year." Feel free to jump in the comments and let us know what we missed.

Weiner on Twitter

In a crowded and competitive field, former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner grabs our "What Were You Thinking?" award for this one.

The congressman (we're staying away from name jokes because ... well ... too easy) was being talked up as possibly the next mayor of New York City when his Twitter account was apparently hacked by someone who sent lewd photos to some of his female followers. That's the story Weiner gave, anyway.

Except, as it turned out, that someone was him.

Many of us gave Weiner the benefit of the doubt in the scandal's opening hours. I mean, what public official would be dumb enough to get raunchy on a platform like Twitter, where anyone who wants to can follow your every tweet?

Turns out ...

He wasn't alone. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried tweeted jokes about the Japan tsunami and earthquake that killed more than 15,000 people. Actor and Twitter pioneer Ashton Kutcher posted a hasty tweet defending Penn State coach Joe Paterno -- before, he says, learning the full extent of the school's child-sex scandal. The resulting backlash even led him to quit Twitter, at least temporarily.

But for so badly misunderstanding the public nature of Twitter, for the whirlwind of lies that followed before he fessed up and resigned and ... yes ... for thinking women like it when you send them closeup pictures of your crotch on the Internet, Weiner earns this bulging "Fail."

Go Daddy's SOPA misstep

When the vast majority of the Web's most active players are against something, and when your livelihood depends on the Web's most active players, it's probably best to either go along or keep quiet about it, right?

Not so for Go Daddy, the Web registrar and hosting company known for its titillating TV ads. In December, the company made the ill-fated decision to come out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Google, Yahoo and Facebook are just some of the Internet heavyweights that have lined up to stop the proposed federal law, which would penalize websites that host pirated content. The bill has come under fire from Web-freedom advocates, who say it could dampen online expression.

Go Daddy, which had submitted testimony to Congress in support of the bill, issued a public statement supporting it -- even doubling down with a stronger statement when the Web backlash began.

Fast forward 24 hours and the company -- which had already earned ire in some quarters for its racy (some might say sexist) TV commercials and its founder's penchant for elephant hunting -- changed its mind amid a rash of defections.

Tens of thousands of domains, including more than 50 owned by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, were moved from Go Daddy, and that's before a Reddit-organized boycott planned for Friday. Oops.

'Duke Nukem Forever'

When video gamers wait 14 years for a follow-up to one of their favorite titles, they sort of expect it not to suck. In the minds of many, "Duke Nukem Forever" failed that important test.

First announced in 1997, "Forever" was to be a follow-up to a game that got lots of love for good-heartedly pushing the boundaries of sex, violence and naughty language in the emerging field of shooter games.

It was delayed. And delayed. And delayed. What finally emerged in June hit with a thud.

"At best, it can look a few years out of date; at worst, it is a blurry, stuttering mess," wrote CNN's Ravi Hiranand, in what actually was one of the kinder reviews of the game "Playing the game feels like being thrown back into the mid-'90s, and not in a happy, nostalgic sense."

In a post-"Grand Theft Auto" world, maybe waiting "forever" would have been a better idea after all.

The other tablets

As 2011 dawned, it appeared that Apple had created a thriving new space in personal computing with its iPad.

Beginning in January at the Consumer Electronics Show, a host of competing companies stepped forward with their rival tablets. The Motorola Xoom. BlackBerry's PlayBook. Samsung Galaxy Tab. The HP TouchPad.

One problem: Nobody bought them.

Most of the new tablets, many running Google's Android operating system, came in at roughly $500 -- about the same price as Apple's new iPad 2. And the public showed that at that price, they were happy going with the industry leader.

Some tablets got pulled. Others never made it off the production line. HP had some luck selling TouchPads -- after throwing up its hands and slashing prices to fire-sale levels.

One exception. Amazon may have cracked the code late in the year with its Kindle Fire, a smaller, simpler tablet that, at $199, is $300 cheaper than the least-expensive iPad 2.

Game off at PlayStation Network

When roughly 70 million users lose access to your gaming and entertainment network, it's a "fail."

In April, a hacker accessed account information for users of Sony's PlayStation Network, ultimately knocking the network offline in late April. It wasn't completely restored until early June and some gamers lacked access for weeks.

While getting hacked was bad, some users were even madder after Sony took a week from the time of the attack to let them know what happened.

Another, much smaller, attack happened in October. In the end, it looks like most of the network's fans stuck around -- a fact no doubt aided by multiple blockbuster game releases this year.

iPhones and bars don't mix

Seriously, Apple employees?

No ... seriously?

In 2010, the tech world was aflutter after an Apple employee, reportedly celebrating his birthday, lost a prototype of the unreleased iPhone 4 in a California beer hall.

Tech blog Gizmodo bought the phone, showcased it on their site, and touched off a firestorm that included everything from police raids to legal threats.

Well, at least we know that after all of that, it could never possibly happen again.

No ... wait. It happened again.

Tech blog CNET reported that an Appler left a prototype of the iPhone 4S in a Mexican bar and restaurant in San Francisco.

As our John Sutter wrote: "Here's a theory: Maybe there's some sort of connection between drinking and losing things?"

Netflix-Qwikster

Netflix, the Web's most popular movie-rental service, first rattled some customers by raising prices in July.

Then, in September, the company announced it was, basically, splitting itself in half. Web-streaming video would still come from Netflix. DVD-by-mail rentals would come from a separate company.

Called ... "Qwikster."

Where to start here? Customers who wanted both services complained about having to set up and maintain two different accounts on two different websites. Then there was the new name, which felt dated (Napster and Friendster, anyone?) and like it was spat out by some zany-misspelled-startup name generator.

Oh yeah ... and there was the fact that the "Qwikster" Twitter handle was already owned by a guy whose avatar was a weed-smoking Elmo muppet.

Chris Taylor, of Mashable, questioned whether Qwikster was "the worst product launch since New Coke."

It didn't even last as long as that syrupy mistake. About three weeks later, Netflix announced that Qwikster was dead.

PayPal plays Scrooge

Shutting down a fund to give presents to children in need at Christmas? Sounds like something one-percenter Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life" would endorse.

But that's essentially what Web-payment titan PayPal was doing before getting popped in the nose by the Internet.

Snarky blog Regretsy, when not mocking regrettable craft projects, has long maintained various charity funds. With the holidays approaching, actress and blog runner April Winchell (who writes on the site as "Helen Killer") announced a fund drive to buy toys for 200 children submitted by community members.

It was hugely successful, meeting its fundraising goal in the first 24 hours. Then PayPal, which was processing the donations, stepped in and froze the fund because it said Winchell used a "Donate" button that's supposed to be for nonprofits only.

The Web wasn't pleased.

Winchell used her popular blog to blast PayPal in less-than-friendly terms. Twitter users and other sites amplified the outrage.

A day later, PayPal said it "recognized our error" and even offered to donate to the fund.

God bless us ... every one.

iPhone 4S battery life

OK ... this one never reached the fever pitch that the iPhone 4's antenna problems did last year.

And maybe it's a sign that, when millions of people buy your product in the first few hours it exists, there are bound to be problems.

Despite not being the mythical iPhone 5, the 4S flew out of Apple stores when it was released October 14. But within hours, users started flocking to Apple's support forum to complain their batteries were running out of juice faster than Herman Cain's presidential campaign.

Apple publicly ignored the complaints for a little over two weeks. Then the company issued a statement saying that "a small number of customers" had complained about the battery and that an update to the phone's operating system was on the way.

As with the iPhone 4 "death grip," we'll call this a modest "fail" wrapped inside an epic win. The battery gripes didn't stop Apple from selling an iLoad of the new phones.

Bad year for BlackBerry

Alas, poor BlackBerry.

Research in Motion's crack-like gadget was once synonymous with "smartphone," effectively ushering in the era of messaging, e-mail-checking and other Phone 2.0 behavior.

But, 2011 wasn't kind.

It's bad enough that the iPhone and the rise of the Androids continue to muscle BlackBerrys out of the limelight. Then the BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM's effort in the burgeoning tablet space, arrived with a thud in April.

The capper, however, was an October outage at a data center that caused users to lose messaging ability in parts of Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa, Latin America and North America. (To their credit, RIM ultimately gave away a pile of free apps to the folks affected).

The outage lasted for several days and was the final straw for some users, who abandoned ship for other phones.

Who Will Be the Next Steve Jobs?

Source: FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/07/next-steve-jobs

1. Mark Pincus
Have you played Farmville? Then you already know the work of Mark Pincus, the CEO and co-founder of a San Francisco start-up called Zynga that has made a killing with Facebook apps. According to an SEC filing, about 232 million people play Zynga games routinely. This past summer, the Wall Street Journal valued the five-year-old company at a hefty $15 billion to $20 billion. Pincus is a social marketing genius with a broad smile, bright ideas and plenty of charisma.

2. Caterina Fake
Fake has a long history of innovation -- her entrepreneurial record in Silicon Valley is legendary. She helped launch the site Flickr.com in 2004, which paved the wave for other Web 2.0 services that allow user contributions, tagging (to make images easier to find) and discussion over content. (The site was sold to Yahoo! in 2005. Her latest project, called Hunch.com, goes a step further, allowing users to share their preferences and create an on-going recommendation system for books, movies, or just about anything you can find on the Web.

3. Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg has the same golden aura and visionary outlook of Jobs. The CEO and co-founder of Facebook said during a recent Facebook tech conference that his company stands at “the intersection of technology and social issues,” so he’s prone to make grand statements. His main contribution is building what's become a second Internet of sorts, a safe and mostly secure haven for storing your digital life: photos, conversations, news and more. The company is steadily closing in on 1 billion users on the network -- all of this, and the guy is only 27.

4. Jon Rubenstein
Born a year after Steve Jobs, in 1956, Jon Rubenstein worked at Apple up until 2006. According to Rob Enderle, a consumer analyst, Rubenstein was being groomed to replace Steve Jobs. He even has the same knack for creating a “reality distortion field” at product launches. Rubenstein helped create the original iPod but eventually left Apple for Palm. His efforts to create a new smartphone interface called WebOS fell flat: the company was eventually sold to HP. Still, there’s signs he will rise to prominence from within HP as a tech executive.

5. Marissa Meyer
Named one of the 50 most powerful woman by Fortune Magazine, Marissa Meyer has a bright tech future. A vice president at Google, this well-liked visionary is also the “face” of the company: She's said to have created the basic building blocks for the Google.com and Gmail interfaces. Meyer is well-spoken, chats easily with press and has a upbeat personality.

6. Dean Kamen
The inventor of the Segway, Kamen has the bright spark of the entrepreneur about him. And he's clearly got "that vision thing": When he invents something, it takes a while for people to realize how innovative it is. The Segway is still an uncommon sight on sidewalks, but lately he has worked with science foundations for kids, invented alternative engines and founded a research institute.

7. Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The co-founders of Google have a youthful exuberance about technology and a penchant for inventing products everyone uses. Even the mission statement at Google is far-reaching: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Charles King, an IT analyst at PUND-IT, says the two founders did more than just create a search engine -- they invented (or at least popularized) the idea of using the Web for data processing and storage.

8. Tony Hseih
Here’s a name you might not know, unless you've read his best-selling book about entrepreneurship, "Delivering Happiness." In the book, the founder of Zappos.com -- a shoe retailer now owned by Amazon -- makes a case for pleasing customers by making a company all about customer service. Hseih’s greatest gift is in communicating ideas, something that served Steve Jobs well throughout his career.

9. Michael Dell
A wild card pick, Michael Dell is a successful entrepreneur and visionary who started Dell in 1984. He’s older than Zuckerberg, who was born in 1984, and his contributions in tech have more to do with enterprise computing (the servers that run in a company), IT services (helping a business run efficiently) and direct marketing to consumers. His time may finally come now that HP has pulled out of the PC business.

Great American Garage Entrepreneurs

October 6, 2011
http://www.history.com/news/2011/10/06/great-american-garage-entrepreneurs

Setting up shop in a garage may sound like a cliché, but did you know that a number of thriving American businesses really got their start that way? One of the most famous examples is, of course, Apple Inc., founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, who died Wednesday at age 56, and his friend Steve Wozniak. Find out about their brainchild and other major companies that trace their roots to humble birthplaces.

Apple Inc.
On April Fool’s Day in 1976, 21-year-old Steve Jobs and 25-year-old Steve Wozniak established Apple Computer, later known simply as Apple Inc. Pioneers in the burgeoning world of personal computers, the pair worked out of Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. Jobs, a college dropout, became one of the great innovators of the digital age, transforming not just his original field but also music, animation and mobile communications. He died at 56 on October 5, 2011, after a long struggle with cancer. Apple’s notable products include the Macintosh computer line, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, iTunes, the Mac OS X operating system and Final Cut Studio.

Hewlett-Packard
Considered the first American technology business to launch behind a garage door, Hewlett-Packard was founded in 1939 by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, who had scraped together an initial capital investment of $538. At the time, Packard and his new wife Lucile lived in an apartment next door and Hewlett camped out in a shed on the property, located in Palo Alto, California. After developing a range of electronic products, the company entered the computer market in 1966 and is now one of the world’s largest technology corporations. The one-car garage where it all began is a designated California historic landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Walt Disney Company
In 1923, the Missouri-born cartoonist Walt Disney moved to Los Angeles with his brother Roy to make short films that combined animation and live action. They spent several months producing their first series, the “Alice Comedies,” out of their uncle Robert’s garage before relocating to the back of a realty office and finally to a studio. Now the world’s largest media conglomerate, the Walt Disney Company became a leader in film, television, travel, leisure, music and publishing. In 2006, it acquired Pixar Studios from another veteran of a California garage: Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer. Robert Disney’s garage was saved from demolition in 1984 and donated to the Stanley Ranch Museum.

Mattel
When Ruth and Elliot Handler, who had met in an industrial design course, started making picture frames in their California garage, they probably never thought their venture—Mattel—would grow into the world’s biggest toy manufacturer. More or less by accident, they wound up crafting dollhouse furniture and later children’s playthings out of spare wood scraps. In the late 1950s, Ruth determined there was a market for dolls that looked like “grown-ups”; ignoring her husband’s objections, she designed a prototype and named it after their daughter, Barbie. (Ken, named for their son, followed soon after.) Mattel struck gold with the new line, and in 1968 Ruth became the company’s president.

Google
Long after Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer made their unpretentious debuts, another technology powerhouse came screeching out of a Silicon Valley garage. After developing a groundbreaking search engine for a research project, Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in a garage owned by Susan Wojcicki, a friend and future employee. The company, which has since branched out into numerous other areas, now runs the most visited websites on the Internet and boasts locations around the world. In 2006, Google bought Wojcicki’s house—and the garage where its vast empire began.

Yankee Candle Company
In 1969, 17-year-old Michael Kittredge of South Hadley, Massachusetts, couldn’t dig up enough cash to buy his mother a Christmas present. On a whim, he melted down some crayons in his parents’ garage and made her a scented candle. When neighbors began expressing interest, Kittredge, who needed a hobby since his rock band had just broken up, recruited some friends and began churning out candles. By the following year, the booming business had taken over the Kittredge home, so the young entrepreneurs moved into a dilapidated mill. Today, the Yankee Candle Company is the leading U.S. candle manufacturer, with hundreds of retail locations, international distribution and multiple product lines.

Is Amazon interested in buying WebOS from Hewlett-Packard?

September 30, 2011
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/09/amazon-is-latest-rumored-to-be-interested-in-buying-webos-from-hp-1.html

Amazon.com's Kindle Fire is a jump into the growing tablet market and a clear challenge to Apple's blockbuster ability to integrate hardware and software so seamlessly.

But what will Amazon's post-Fire moves look like as it seeks to build a major business in tablets, something only Apple has so far been able to pull off?

According to both VentureBeat and the New York Times site Deal Book, Amazon is considering buying the WebOS mobile operating system from the struggling Hewlett-Packard in a move to nab an OS of its own and to gain some mobile tech patents as well. Amazon officials were unavailable for comment on the rumors Friday.

Unlike Apple, Amazon doesn't own the software that will run on its tablet. Android is owned by Google, though Google shares its Android with the world at no cost and the version of Android that will run on the Fire is a build unique to Amazon.

But while Google doesn't charge for Android, others do. Microsoft, for example, is collecting royalties from Samsung for its use of Android and has agreements with other Android users, such as HTC, that pay Microsoft and/or call for shared patent portfolio licenses.

Google, known for its weak patent portfolio, is attempting to buy Motorola Mobility in both a move to help shore up its IP and get into the hardware business in a limited way.

HP bought Palm in April 2010 for $1.2 billion, mainly for WebOS, but in August the company gave up on making hardware for the operating system.

As pointed out by VentureBeat, HP has been eyeing Amazon as a possible partner for WebOS as far back as July, Jon Rubinstein, who was then leading HP's WebOS division, said in an interview with the website ThisIsMyNext. This was due to Amazon's potential to match WebOS with an ecosystem of content -- books, music, TV shows and movies.

Google Doodle of the Year: Freddie Mercury

In honor of what would be his 65th birthday, here's a Google tribute to the lead singer of Queen, arguably the greatest vocalist in the history of rock music...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe0gIFxYhrk

Significa

Released: West Memphis Three
After over 18 years in prison, and four years after crime scene DNA was presented that found no evidence linking the trio to the Arkansas murders. Credit Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp with an assist on the statsheet for this one...

"They were convicted for being young, goth, Wiccan metalheads at the height of the Satanic Panic. Today they walk free.”
DangerousMinds.net

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Bill Clinton Goes Vegan

As CNN Notes: "By the time he reached the White House, Bill Clinton's appetite was legend. He loved hamburgers, steaks, chicken enchiladas, barbecue and french fries but wasn't too picky. At one campaign stop in New Hampshire, he reportedly bought a dozen doughnuts and was working his way through the box until an aide stopped him." No more, as over the past year, Big Bad Bill has become Sweet William. Under the dietary guide of Dr. Dean Ornish, director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, he has lost over 20 pounds feeding on a vegan diet:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/18/bill.clinton.diet.vegan

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Carrie Fisher has lost 50 pounds since becoming a spokewoman for Jenny Craig, dropping to 130 pounds. She's reportedly thinking of putting on her metal bikini from Return of the Jedi again. Incidentally, Jabba the Hutt would be a good candidate for Weight Watchers...

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Jim Thome: 600 Home Runs

And it still may not be enough to get in the Hall of Fame in the age of steroids...

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America's Most Walkable Cities, 2011

1. New York
2. San Francisco
3. Boston
4. Chicago
5. Philadelphia

Source: Yahoo.com

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Acquired: Motorola

By Google, giving them a smartphone maker to stay competitive with Apple, Nokia and Blackberry...

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Discovered: Lager Beer DNA

The yeast behind the most popular alcoholic drink in the world comes from Argentina, of all places, according to scientists. It traveled from South America about 500 years ago to Germany. In return, Argentina was rewarded with Nazi war criminals. Thanks for the drink, though!!!

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Diagnosed: Pat Summitt

With early stages of dementia. She has won a record 1071 games and 8 national titles as coach for the women's Tennessee Volunteers basketball team...

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Married: Kim Kardashian

To some guy, we forget his name. Don't worry, she'll still appear in The Konformist wearing outfits that show off her ass...

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RIP
The HP TouchPad, July 1 - August 18, 2011

It would be fun to blame this on Russell Brand, their dubious spokesman, but the real culprit is Apple, whose iPad Hewlett-Packard just couldn't compete with. And if HP can't compete, good luck to Motorola, Samsung or Blackberry. (Ironically, after the TouchPad discontinue was announced, its sales skyrocketed over the Internet due to tablets previously priced at $499 and $599 on sale for $99 and $149.) The TouchPad is the tip of the iceberg for HP changes, as they are planning to spinoff their PC business (even though they're the world's biggest PC maker, a title they've held since buying Compaq in 2002) and getting out of the smartphone biz (even though they only bought Palm last year for $1.2 billion as part of a strategy to become a smartphone-tablet giant.) If this sounds to you like HP is flailing around cluelessly, you're not alone:its stock dropped more than it has since Black Monday 1987 on the news...

The Burger King Mascot, 2003-11

For some reason, BK decided its creepy looking mascot was bad for business. He actually has a semi-respectable history, with previous incarnations starting in 1955...

Nick Ashford, 70

Half of the husband-wife Motown songwriting duo behind "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and "Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand"...

Jerry Lieber, 78

Half of another great songwriting duo with Mike Stoller, penned such hits as "Hound Dog", "Jailhouse Rock", "Yakety Yak" and "King Creole"...

Mike Flanagan, 59

MLB pitcher who won 167 games in his career, including 23 in 1979 while winning the Cy Young for the Baltimore Orioles. He also was part of the last O's World Series team from 1983...

Joey Vento, 71

Owner of Geno's Steaks, founded in Philly in 1966 one of the city's two most famed makers of cheesesteaks...

Last but definitely not least, farewell to Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple, arguably the man who has changed America for the better more than anyone over the last decade. Normally, we don't gush about CEOs on The Konformist, but we'll make a deserved exception for him...

Hacking Group "Anonymous" Is Making Its Own Social Network

Dylan Love | Jul. 18, 2011
http://www.businessinsider.com/anonymous-anonplus-2011-7

Famed cyber-troublemakers Anonymous are taking things into their own hands after Google removed their Google+ profile and blocked their Gmail account.

In retaliation, Anonymous is starting their own social network, dubbed "AnonPlus."

In a rather grandiose manifesto on the splash page, AnonPlus.com currently reads:

"Welcome to AnonPlus. This will be your future. This will be our future. Today, we welcome you to begin anew…to watch this glorious incipience happen – one upon which you will never turn your back on. Welcome to the Revolution – a new social network where there is no fear…of censorship…of blackout…nor of holding back. Life is what you make of it – and we are making it. As you step through into the coming weeks, months, and years with us…they will know that we've arrived. There will be no more oppression. There will be no more tyranny. We are the people and we are Anonymous. We have arrived."

What the Rise of Google+ Says About Facebook

Google's new social network is a hit, but its sudden popularity may have more to do with the missteps of its predecessor. Peter Pachal
August 13, 2011
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391038,00.asp

When Google debuted its social network, this time for real, this time for really real, about six weeks ago, it was big news. Once Google+ arrived, many wondered whether or not a true Facebook rival was finally here. People focused on features, apps, APIs, and Google's potential to scale to measure whether this thing would ever be a real Facebook rival, or another dud, like Google Buzz.

While all those things are all important, there's another factor at work in the rise of Google+, which, by most measures, has been incredible. And that's Facebook. More specifically, the things about Facebook that annoy and frustrate its users. When PCMag put the question to readers, "Will you ditch Facebook for Google+," a whopping 50 percent said they would. Even if most of those who answered yes don't actually end up quitting Facebook, that statistic illustrates a general frustration with the service that's probably familiar to anyone who's on it.

Facebook has been annoying its users probably since its inception. Now, every piece of software has its problems. Some users of iPhoto might be annoyed that it doesn't have built-in integration with Snapfish. Twitter users may not like that a direct message looks almost identical to an @reply (Anthony Weiner certainly doesn't). That's normal. Facebook's issues go deeper, though. Facebook's integration into our lives is so personal, so far-reaching, that when it does something users don't like, irritation can quickly become outrage.

There have been numerous cases of Facebook making some kind of of change to its features, users responding with an uproar, and then Facebook proceeds to make the change anyway. A good example is friend lists, which were recently replaced with Groups. Facebook gave its users lists, noted that (after a while) only 5 percent of users actually used them, and then took them away.

"I know that they say only 5 percent of users really cared about that feature, but they cared about that feature a lot," says Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, Facebook app developer, and an self-described unofficial Google+ statistician. "In the end, everyone had to comply and go along with all the Facebook changes, some of them pretty radical, because they had no choice."

Unitl now, of course. There have been other social networks since Facebook came on the scene, sure, but Google+ is the only one that has the features, the scale, and—possibly most important—the buzz to be a real Facebook competitor. Until now, quitting Facebook was a difficult prospect. Not necessarily physically difficult (though Facebook does bury how to leave the service on its site), but socially difficult. I personally know at least a half-dozen people who left the network at one time or another only to inevitably return. The reason? Some variation of "All my friends are on it, and I don't want to miss out."

In other words, there was really nowhere to go that offered the same experience, so they returned. But now that there's another place for people to get social online, things could be different the next time someone walks away. Google+ isn't quite the Facebook alternative Google wishes it was, however, since the new service doesn't actually have all your friends on it—yet. While the growth has been extremely rapid, it's still 25 million to Facebook's 750 million.

"Google has a big chicken and egg problem," says social media analyst Lou Kerner. "Nobody's going to use it until people are on it. But that's a problem that all social networks have. But to the degree that anyone can solve it, it's Google."

Even though Google+'s member base is a drop in Facebook's bucket, it's actually a pretty notable drop. Google was selective about whom it let into its private playground when it debuted its social network, making sure the initial users were, in a word, smart. What Kerner sees as a weakness of Google+—that it's been limited more or less to the digital "cognoscenti"—Allen sees as a strength. Google+ is already the cool new thing, and a dynamic population of first-generation users (see the slideshow above) multiplies that perception.

"The geek crowd has fallen in love with Google+," says Allen. "Those first 10 or 20 million people who first jumped into Google+, it's like the cream of the crop in technical and professional circles. I have never seen this kind of online discourse and communication."

In the end, the cool factor could be the one that ultimately matters the most. A couple of months ago, when it looked like Facebook's popularity in the U.S. was starting to wane, I entertained the theory (one of many) that Facebook's time might have come. I dismissed it right away—rightly, since user engagement on the site is still rising—but all endings have a beginning. Facebook, for all its impressive features and vast statistics, not to mention a looming IPO said to be potentially worth $100 billion, just isn't cool anymore. Even Allen says the people he talks to about Facebook say "It feels so much like MySpace."

Cool, almost by definition, isn't quantifiable. But there's virtually no question that Google+ currently has loads of it, and Facebook is running dry. Mark Zuckerberg probably isn't losing any sleep over Google+ just yet, and maybe he's shouldn't given Facebook's collosal size and influence. But he should definitely think twice before pulling the trigger on the next Facebook feature with questionable privacy implications. As soon as Google+ opens its doors fully (it's still invitation-only and limited to users 18 or older), every single Facebook user will have the chance to try something new. And they may decide they like it better.

For more from Peter, follow him on Twitter @petepachal.

Apple Tops Google

Apple ended Google's four year run as the world's most valuable brand, crushing it with an estimated worth of $153.29 billion vs. $111.5 billion. IBM came in third with $100.85 billion...
Apple Tops Google As World's Most Valuable Brand
5/9/2011
http://www.rttnews.com/Content/BreakingNews.aspx?Node=B1&Id=1617943

Obama Wants to Read Your Email...

From Wired.com:

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.

As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.

A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.

The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.

But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way...

Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us
David Kravets
April 7, 2011
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/04/fourth-amendment-email-2

Judge rejects Google’s deal with authors and publishers to put books online

Jia Lynn Yang
yangjl@washpost.com
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/judge-rejects-googles-deal-with-authors-and-publishers-to-put-books-online/2011/03/22/AB8yNKFB_story.html


In a blow to Google’s bid to put all books online and expand its Internet dominance, a federal judge in New York on Tuesday rejected the search giant’s settlement with authors and publishers, saying the terms “simply go too far” in giving Google an advantage over competitors and copyright holders.

The decision comes as regulators in this country and in Europe scrutinize Google’s supremacy in the search business. The judge’s thinking, laid out in a 48-page filing, echoed many of the antitrust arguments made by the Department of Justice when it criticized the deal a year ago.

Google vowed on Tuesday to continue digitizing books, only a portion of which are affected by the settlement, which would have allowed Google to sell access to millions of out-of-print books to consumers and libraries.

“This is clearly disappointing, but we’ll review the court’s decision and consider our options,” said Hilary Ware, managing counsel at Google. “Like many others, we believe this agreement has the potential to open up access to millions of books that are currently hard to find in the U.S. today.”

Google could appeal the decision or attempt to satisfy the judge’s concerns by negotiating a new settlement.

The judge, Denny Chin of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, said the deal would “arguably give Google control over the search market.” Specifically, Chin was concerned that the settlement would allow third parties to show small portions of books scanned by Google only if they had entered into agreements with the company.

He added the deal also presented concerns about privacy, since Google could potentially collect information on what kinds of books people were reading.

The class action settlement, reached in 2008, came after the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google to stop the company from scanning books and putting them on the Web. Under the terms of the deal, Google said it would pay $125 million and allow authors and publishers to collect money anytime their books are viewed online.

Critics of the deal cheered the judge’s decision.

“This opinion is, in effect, a microcosm of the big issues that Google’s confronting in Washington,” said Gary Reback, an antitrust lawyer and leader of the Open Book Alliance, a group that opposed the settlement. “We think it’s as much as we could have asked for. We’re very pleased with it.”

“We believe the court reached the right result on this complex, proposed settlement,” said Gina Talamona, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department. “We are pleased that the court supported our position.”

Tablet Computer for $200?

A great article by Brett Arends was in the WSJ (inside joke: sorry, JT) about his desire to not pay $500 bucks for an iPad, much less $400 (or, as my pal Scott Rose of ScottWorld.com has pointed out, $349 for a refurbished iPad.) What did he end up paying? "Less than $200... and about 20 minutes of my time."

How'd he do it? Arends explains:

I bought a Barnes & Noble Nook Color tablet (for $190 plus tax from a temporary online promotion, down from the usual $250). And then I downloaded a very simple, perfectly legal software fix from the Internet that turned it into a fully functioning tablet running on Google's Android platform. The fix, known as a "rooting," unlocks Barnes & Noble's proprietary overlay. The instructions came via Ars Technica, a reputable site devoted to technology, and were pretty easy to follow.

I wasn't really expecting it to work. I tried it as an experiment. But the results were remarkable.

The Nook Color, which was designed mainly for reading books and magazines, is about half the size of an iPad or a Xoom. It weighs about 30% less. It runs on WiFi, but not 3G. It has an absolutely superb screen. And, once you've unlocked the software, it runs many Android applications, from email to news readers TweetDeck to, yes, Angry Birds.
It even, ironically, runs the Kindle app from Barnes & Noble's rival Amazon.com. So I can now use my Nook Color to read Kindle books.

Be aware that you perform this software hack entirely at your own risk. Barnes & Noble says it invalidates your warranty. The process ran smoothly for me, but when I read the Internet chat rooms, I found at least a few people had had problems. If it goes wrong, you're on your own.

Of course, it's hardly the same as an iPad or a Xoom or a Galaxy. It doesn't have any cameras. It has a slower processor. It's not for power users. The video support is pretty limited. A few Android programs still won't run on it. And dedicated gamers will doubtless find it frustrating.

But as a basic tablet, it's absolutely fine for me—and, I suspect, a lot of people. Indeed, I happen to prefer it to bigger rivals, because it actually slips into my overcoat pocket. (I hate having to carry things around.)


Arends concludes with some observations, the first one being that the Nook is underrated and B&N needs to turn it into a tablet. On this score, he's 100% correct: it appears B&N has been caught up in its own idea of what the Nook should be used for rather than realize what the customers want to use it for. The winners in business realize that the customer's desires always trump their own plans. B&N is hurting: they need a winner, and Nook, if marketed as a cheap but effective tablet, is a winner.

His second point, however, is even more important, that "tablets are probably going to become cheap, near-commodity items, and maybe sooner than you think.

Think about this. Barnes & Noble — a company that is, ahem, hardly in the forefront of technological innovation — has managed to put together a pretty good Android tablet from scratch in short order, and is selling it for $250 (and even less if, like me, you catch a promotion). It's not a top-of-the-range model, but it does include a superb screen — and analysts will tell you that's typically one of the most expensive parts of a tablet.

Investors in Apple, Motorola Mobility, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Research In Motion and others are hoping for great things from tablet computers. It's all anyone wants to talk about—the huge profits to come from all these tablets and the "cloud computing" services they use. Apple alone is the second-most-valuable company in the world, with an enterprise value of more than $300 billion.

Count me as deeply Missourian about the long-term profits likely to come from this entire industry. In the short run, there may be fantastic money to be made. In the long term, tablets will be a dime a dozen. Every platform will have all the apps you need. Any brand or model is going to have a tough challenge maintaining a competitive advantage over another. Someday we're going to look back and laugh at the day when people thought tablets — or smartphones — were exciting and profitable businesses to be in.

If Barnes & Noble can do it, anyone can."

Move Over, Apple! My Tablet Cost $200
BRETT ARENDS
MARCH 9, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703662804576188901890884360.html

Hi-Tech Team: Nokia & Microsoft

Nokia may be the biggest cellphone maker (with 31 percent share of the market in the last quarter of 2010) its chunk of the market is dropping. Even more important, it only has 3 percent of the all important smart phone market in North America.
So its plan to team up with Microsoft may be a brilliant move. Or maybe it's just two dying leaders clinging together in desperation. Either way, it's worth taking notice. Nokia will use Windows 7 in its smart phones, in hopes to compete with Apple's iPhone, the Blackberry and industry leader Google's Android...

Nokia, Microsoft in pact to take on Apple, Google
MATTI HUUHTANEN
Friday, Feb 11, 2011
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/02/11/nokia_microsoft_iphone_android_google/index.html

Genachowski Offers Pretend Net Neutrality Proposal

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/12/01/genachowski-offers-pretend-net-neutrality-proposal/

Genachowski Offers Pretend Net Neutrality Proposal
David Dayen
Wednesday December 1, 2010

As if there weren’t enough things going to pot today, the FCC has decided to come out with a proposal to pretend to institute net neutrality regulations.

In a speech he plans to give Wednesday in Washington, Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman, will outline a framework for broadband Internet service that forbids both wired and wireless Internet service providers from blocking lawful content. But the proposal would allow broadband providers to charge consumers different rates for different levels of service, according to a text of the speech provided to The New York Times.

Mr. Genachowski has decided not to use the commission’s telephone regulatory powers to govern broadband Internet service, a move that he proposed in May that would potentially open Internet service to heavier government regulation.

His proposal would also allow broadband providers to manage their networks to limit congestion or harmful traffic.


I don’t know how you could call this net neutrality at all. Broadband providers could charge different rates for “faster” service; they will not be subject to common carrier regulations on their product; and they can “manage their networks,” which is precisely the point of net neutrality. You can’t block content, but if you can “manage” it, you can essentially slow it out of existence.

I’ll go with Marvin Ammori on this one; we have garbage masquerading as net neutrality.

It exempts wireless. Like the Google-Verizon proposal, Julius’s makes an artificial distinction between accessing the Internet through a wire and through a wireless connection. No nondiscrimination rule applies to wireless. The Chairman’s fig leaf is to ban “blocking” on wireless, but not discrimination [...]

The proposal may not ban paid-priority. A ban on paid priority is central to any real net neutrality proposal, beginning with the Snowe-Dorgan bill of 2006. Indeed, the notion of “payment for priority” is what started the net neutrality fight; in late 2005, AT&T’s CEO said that Vonage and Google had to stop using his pipes for free. The only way a carrier could charge for priority is if basic Internet access was not sufficient for a company to compete; if Yahoo! does need priority to compete effectively, why pay? Without a ban on paid priority, we can expect basic access to deteriorate so companies have to pay for priority [...]

There may no jurisdiction for any of this anyway. In April, the D.C. Circuit interpreted Title I of the Communications Act narrowly, severely curtailing the FCC’s ability to adopt rules for Internet access [...] After a month of studying the question, the FCC General Counsel concluded the obvious: relying on Title I authority after that case was irresponsible and doomed to failure. The Chairman made a video explaining how the FCC should rely on authority under Title II, which is something that several Justices of the Supreme Court (including Scalia) thought the FCC should have done from the beginning. The Chairman described reclassifying to Title II as the principled center, but without principle, the center keeps shifting.In the proposal, the FCC will not reclassify.


So this is a pretend net neutrality proposal, which has all the problems of the status quo if not more, and which is still drawing fire from Republicans because it pretends to call itself net neutrality. They keep pushing from the right, but in reality this proposal would be a gold mine for the telecoms.

Google Blacklists Prison Planet.com

http://www.prisonplanet.com/google-blacklists-prison-planet-com.html

Google Blacklists Prison Planet.com
You Tube freezes Alex Jones Channel as web censorship accelerates in frightening early salvo of move towards tiered Internet system that favors large corporations while strangling independent voices
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, November 30, 2010

In a damning new lurch towards web censorship, Google’s news aggregator has blacklisted Prison Planet and Infowars despite the fact that both websites are internationally known and now attract more traffic than many mainstream media websites, while Google-owned You Tube has frozen the Alex Jones Channel based on a spurious complaint about showing Wikileaks footage that has been carried on hundreds of other You Tube channels for months.

After carrying our content for years, Google News last week purged Prison Planet and Infowars from its aggregator system, ensuring that our stories no longer appear alongside the likes of CNN and Fox News in a frightening early salvo in the move towards a tiered Internet that favors large corporations while independent voices are strangled.

Only smaller sites that re-post Prison Planet content have appeared in Google searches since early November, proving that the campaign is a deliberate effort on behalf of Google to restrict traffic to Alex Jones’ websites. Our stories have been linked almost every day on the Drudge Report for the past three weeks, as our readership figures soar past numerous corporate media websites that are carried by Google News. We are clearly a legitimate and internationally recognized news outlet and yet Google has blacklisted us because it disagrees with our political viewpoints.

In addition, Google-owned You Tube yesterday moved to freeze the popular Alex Jones Channel, which has well over 100,000 subscribers and has had over 75 million views. You Tube made a spurious claim that the channel had violated “community guidelines” by posting a segment from the infamous Wikileaks Apache footage, when the footage is in fact posted in greater length on hundreds of other You Tube channels, including Al Jazeera, Russia Today and CBS News.

When we responded to You Tube by pointing out that the Wikileaks footage in question appeared in multiple places elsewhere on You Tube in far greater length and detail, and that it was not vulgar or offensive but a real incident that was of clear public concern which was posted under fair use (USC Title 17, Section 106A-117), You Tube reacted by freezing uploading privileges for the account while also threatening to terminate it entirely.

You Tube is essentially sending a message that if you disagree with their decision, your claim won’t be considered, you will simply be punished to an even greater degree.

This is by no means the first time that Google and You Tube have engaged in open blacklisting of Alex Jones’ material.

Over many years we have documented numerous instances of censorship and attempts to chill free speech, includingYou Tube’s removal of The Obama Deception and Google’s refusal to allow its shopping cart software to carry the film after the company labeled the documentary ‘hate speech’.

With the Obama administration vowing to infiltrate and eviscerate so-called “conspiracy theories” by clamping down on free speech through the work of people like Cass Sunstein, Google and its subsidiary You Tube are now at the forefront of the agenda to turn the Internet into a sanitized and compliant forum in the same mould as cable television.

Once Google’s fiercest critics have been silenced for good the company can then set about implementing its CIA-backed total information awareness program, which will scour Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information left by individual users, aiming to use this data to “predict the future” and completely direct and control people’s lives and behavior.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has announced that Google, in conjunction with the CIA, is set to become the ultimate Big Brother entity that “will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives” by constantly tracking their location via smart phones and telling them where to go and what to do.

We have previously reported on Google’s intimate and long standing connections to government spy networks. The company was founded with the aid of CIA seed money.

There is also no doubt that Google is one of the corporations at the forefront of the government’s drive to use cybersecurity as a pretext for killing the free Internet, having previously worked with the NSA and the CIA.

While Google openly spies on people via their wi-fi connections and gets away with it, the company has dispensed entirely with its “don’t be evil motto,” helping the communist Chinese government suppress dissent while simply blacklisting free speech it dislikes in the United States altogether.

There can be little doubt that this latest lurch in web censorship is part of the overall agenda to tighten the noose around independent news websites as they continue to outstrip the establishment media in terms of trustworthiness and reach.

Infowars.com alone now gets more traffic than MSNBC.com, a multi-billion dollar news operation funded by General Electric and the military-industrial complex.

The fact that millions are shunning the mainstream media and flocking to independent media outlets undoubtedly has the system running scared, exemplified by the recent rebellion against the TSA which was led by the Drudge Report.

The fact that the status quo is rapidly losing its power to influence the body politic and that this is shifting over to independent media not controlled by giant corporations has the establishment petrified, which is why they are doing everything possible to tighten the screws on websites like Prison Planet, Infowars, and Alex Jones content in general.

It is evident that the system revels in any chance to dampen the loud voice that Alex Jones, Infowars.com/PrisonPlanet.com and its supporters have raised on the Internet, effectively challenging the status quo and mainstream media spin on major news and events. With the easy passage of the web censorship bill, it is clear that what is happening now to Infowars.com and Alex Jones will soon happen to anyone without a politically-correct message, particularly when that message is capable of resonating throughout large parts of the globe.

With Homeland Security now openly seizing websites with no due course or opportunity for redress, the age of Internet censorship has now begun, with an iron curtain beginning to descend over free speech as the United States enacts policies more draconian than those of communist China.

If independent news websites and their readers don’t stand together in unison to decry Google’s efforts to kill free speech on the Internet, the web as a last outpost for the tattered and torn First Amendment will be lost forever.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

AT&T Gains FCC's Ear as Regulators Near Decision on Net Neutrality

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-01/net-neutrality-vote-by-u-s-fcc-set-for-december-after-year-of-conflict.html

AT&T Gains FCC's Ear as Regulators Near Decision on Net Neutrality Rules
Todd Shields
Nov 30, 2010

A U.S. regulator set a vote on rules to bar Internet service providers led by AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. from interfering with subscribers’ Web traffic.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement today that he sent colleagues “draft rules of the road to preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet” for adoption at the agency’s Dec. 21 meeting.

Genachowski, a Democrat appointed by President Obama, proposed net-neutrality rules in September 2009, and debate has expanded to involve Congress, courts and companies. Proponents including technology companies said regulations are needed to keep the Internet free of restrictions, while opponents such as telephone and cable companies said rules aren’t needed and may stifle investment.

Google Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. struck a compromise in August that didn’t call for rules on wireless Internet service. The proposal wasn’t adopted by officials. Genachowski said his rules build upon a proposal advanced in September by Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, who proposed less-stringent rules for the mobile Web than for service delivered over wires.

The net-neutrality regulations before the FCC “would ensure that the Internet remains a powerful platform for innovation and job creation,” Genachowski said in his statement released by e-mail.

The proposed rules would bar Internet-service providers from blocking or slowing access to lawful content and applications, he said.

Congestion, Harmful Traffic

Providers would have flexibility to deal with congestion or harmful traffic, Genachowski said. Wireless networks would be subject to different regulations that include a no-blocking rule, and the FCC would “be prepared to step in” to address anti-competitive behavior, he said.

Net neutrality encompasses the idea that Internet-service providers can’t interfere with content they deliver to subscribers, or favor their own offerings. Technology companies backing regulations include search company Google, Internet- retailer Amazon.com and Dish Network Corp., which provides on- demand movies to subscribers using Internet lines.

Cable and phone companies that provide Web service say rules may make it difficult to manage the growing traffic on their networks and would limit investment in new Internet capacity. AT&T and Verizon, the majority owner of the largest U.S. mobile provider, Verizon Wireless, have told the FCC that rules aren’t needed for wireless networks.

Obama ‘Big Believer’

President Barack Obama, as a candidate, made net neutrality a campaign issue and has called himself a “big believer” in the approach.

Last month, Republican lawmakers toldGenachowski not to set policy they said was best left to Congress.

Democratic lawmakers released a letter yesterday urging the chairman to act this year to ensure “that the Internet remains an open network.” The letter was signed by Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

The regulations need three votes to pass at the FCC, where two Democrats join Genachowski to form the agency’s majority.

Genachowski said he had abandoned his proposal to put Internet service under the regulatory regime used for telephone service -- a prospect opposed by companies that said such a move could lead to rate regulation.

Not applying rules for telephone companies would be a positive for AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable Inc. and Cablevision Systems Corp., Paul Gallant, a Washington-based analyst with MF Global, said in a Nov. 19 note to clients.

Telephone regulation offered a way to reclaim authority undermined by a U.S. court, Genachowski said in May. Judges ruled in April the the FCC lacked authority to punish Comcast for interfering with subscribers’ Web traffic.

“I am satisfied that we have a sound legal basis” for proceeding without using telephone rules, Genachowski said in his statement today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Todd Shields in Washington at tshields3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Allan Holmes at aholmes25@bloomberg.net