IBLOG SPACE

A subscription service may be in Facebook’s cash-grabbing future if Australian analyst group Telsyte are to be believed. Speaking with News.com.au, the group via analyst Foad Fadaghi noted changes that may well be coming soon to the group that this week posted its Initial Public Offering looking for a bump in the money market in more ways than one. Better mobile apps, more invasive advertising, and “Facebook Premium” may all be on the plate for you social networkers out there inside the coming months or years. In a Premium service, Fadaghi notes that he expects Facebook to offer up services that lesser companies simply cannot. That said, he also expects that Facebook won’t be going Premium anytime soon, just so long as the competition remains in-tact. He also mentions Google+ as a good source for keeping the competition strong enough that no one social network dominates the entire landscape. He spoke thusly: “In the app space you will see a lot more in-app advertising, purchases and su

A select number of users updating to the newest version of Mac OS X on their Apple machines have encountered a bug of sorts, but some relief has some down the pipe in less than 24 hours after the original release. This fix does not come directly in response to the bug, but is an official Apple-made software download you can all use to bring your life back to normalcy. The problem is, the bug itself is one that closes all applications as you open them – so you’re going to have to do some jimmy-rigging. This error is also being called the CUI CUI CUI error because of the letters that pop up on your display when an application is opened. A fix has been found in an Apple forums discussion thread by a fellow by the name of nmphotog who notes that he or she has been able to download a COMBO update as located here: OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Client Combo). The thing he does not mention is how some of you may have to take odd measures to make this happen. If you’re absolutely unable to get any w

Facebook’s IPO filing gave us an inkling of how much money the social network expects to make when it floats this year, but also a hint of what it could spend it on: the first true Facebook Phone. In among the lengthy IPO documentation were not only details of Facebook’s existing achievements in mobile but a map of the challenges yet to come along with Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest fears for the future. $100m is enough to stage a big attack on the mobile market, though, and there’s one obvious place to start: HP’s webOS. Facebook has plenty of mobile users – in fact in December 2011 over half of active members accessed the site via a mobile device – but it has very little control over that experience. So far, the social network hasn’t even monetized them: mobile visitors don’t see adverts, and in fact Facebook has cautioned potential investors that, if the current situation continues, it could actually see a reduction in revenue despite rising membership. However, it’s being subject to the

Here in the second month of 2012, analysts at J.D. Power and Associates have announced Verizon Wireless to be the full service provider with the greatest customer care in the industry here in the United States. In a study based on feedback done with wireless customers who had recently contacted their wireless service providers via the web, by phone, or in stores, Verizon came out on top. These studies were performed by J.D. Power and Associates between July and December of 2011. This is the second time that Verizon has come out on top in a study like this – the first being done in a similar manner with the same study group. Of course those tested were different, but J.D. Power and Associates conducted the study and reported back in July of 2011 that Verizon was then also the top company in the USA for customer help. As Verizon’s own John Bianchi, vice president of customer service operations notes: “Our goal is to provide an outstanding overall customer experience, and we’re thrilled t

Today a photo of a seemingly brand new smartphone from Samsung running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and teasing a Mobile World Congress 2012 release has been leaked. This photos is fake, and here’s why: the pixels simply do not line up. As our friend Michael Crider from Android Community makes clear, there’s not only Photoshop related breaks in the reality of this image, there’s clues in the code we know to be true that cuts down the legitimacy of this beast as well. The image you’re seeing above (and below in the gallery if you’d like a closer look) comes from Eldar Murtazin, a fellow who is often quite vocal about the early looks he gets at devices in the field. He tweeted the image along with the words “Barcelona. Samsung. press photo leaked” and decidedly refrained from speaking any details about the device other than “I dont name this samsung product :-) heh. I think some of you know it…” and that’s it. As Michael Crider explains, there are several ways that you can tell that th

Vizio‘s first CinemaWide 21:9 Smart TV will go on sale in March, it’s been confirmed, in time for the for the NCAA men’s and women’s March Madness basketball tournament. Priced earlier today at $3,499.99 for the 58-inch XVT 3D CinemaWide TrueLED XVT3D580CM, the new set will be the only model Vizio offers for several months, USA Today reports, with other sizes not expected until the second half of 2012. Announced back at CES 2012 in January, Vizio initially promised three CinemaWide models. In addition to the 58-incher, there’s also to be a smaller, 50-inch XVT3D500CM and a huge 71-inch XVT3D710CM. All three will offer smart TV functionality, including streaming content from Hulu Plus and Netflix, using either wired ethernet or integrated WiFi b/g/n connectivity. There’s also a Bluetooth remote control, complete with a built-in QWERTY keyboard for easier searching. Users can watch a regular 16:9 aspect widescreen TV show as well as browse through smart TV apps simultaneously, thanks to

Google has gone back on the offensive over criticisms of its updated privacy policy, taking on Microsoft’s“Putting People First” sniping campaign with a fresh round of myth debunking. The search company took to itsPublic Policy Blog to shoot down rivals’ claims, paying particular attention to suggestions that the policy tweaks are to make better advertising use of personal information. Meanwhile, Microsoft has resurrected its “Gmail Man” skit, an anti-Google video drawing attention to how AdWords uses email keywords. Microsoft’s video – which was seen last year, though not hosted on the company’s own YouTube account - suggests Google is in effect reading your email and using that information for promotions. On the contrary, “no one reads your email but you” Google insists.”Like most major email providers,” the company says “our computers scan messages to get rid of spam and malware, as well as show ads that are relevant to you.” Popout As for suggestions Google’s changes are impacting

With Samsung’s Galaxy S III no longer expected at MWC 2012 later this month, we’ll have to make do with the Samsung Galaxy S Advance, officially announced on Monday and already up for pre-order. An variant of the original Galaxy S, the Galaxy S Advance I9070 is scheduled to drop roughly at the same time as the Barcelona mobile show, according to UK retailer Clove, with pre-orders priced at £295 ($467)plus tax. That means a 4-inch Super AMOLED display running at WVGA resolution, along with a 1GHz dual-core processor paired with 768MB of RAM. There’s also 8GB of internal storage plus a microSD card slot. The 5-megapixel camera is paired with a 1.3-megapixel front-facer, and there’s the usual bevy of sensors and wireless: GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and an FM radio. OS is Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Samsung’s own TouchWiz mods. In case that all sounds reasonably familiar, you’re not going mad. Samsung revealed another iteration of the Galaxy S back in March 2011, the Galaxy S Plus, similar in m

NASA has released footage of the far side of the moon, beamed back by one of the agency’s twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft as they test their MoonKAM hardware. In the clip – which you can see after the cut – the moon’s north pole is visible at the top of the screen, before the craft passes by the Mare Orientale, a 560m wide impact basin. Further down, the clip approaches the lunar south pole, with the 93 mile wide Drygalski crater visible to the left, and identified by its star-shaped formation in the middle. According to NASA “the formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.” Each of the GRAIL craft – named Ebb and Flow – is roughly the size of a washing machine, and entered into lunar orbit around the end of 2011. Unlike most NASA missions, GRAIL is being run for the large part by middle-school students; they’ll pick points on the surface of the moon that they want to see close up, and the satelli

Chrysler has apparently done the impossible, turning around dire losses of $652m in 2010 to make $183m in income in 2011, with operating profit doubling to $2bn. Announcing its full year 2011 figures today, the car firm even managed to choke down a $551m debt payment in Q2, and still exceeded operating profit against the previous year by 2.5x. It’s not from selling a huge increase in cars, either. Chrysler sold 1.6m vehicles worldwide in 2010, increasing that to 2m in 2011. The difference, it seems are the cars itself: sixteen new or refreshed models over the twelve months, and a push into smaller models. Jeep sales proved particularly buoyant, with the Grand Cherokee SUV apparently leading the new models. 2012 will see more spending, as Chrysler promotes the new Dodge Dart as well as prepares its 2013 model year line-up. That should include a reworked Ram 1500 pickup, which will go on sale later in the year, a new Viper, and an all-electric version of the Fiat 500. The Dart will be Ch

Corning and Samsung Mobile Display have announced they’ve teamed up to form a new OLED glass partnership. The two firms are establishing a new joint venture to many factors special the glass substrates that will be used in the OLED display manufacturing market. The joint venture will use Corning’s new Lotus Glass and Samsung’s OLED display tech. Lotus Glass is an interesting product from Corning that is a glass substrate that goes over the top of an OLED display and can be flexed without breaking. That allows it using curved handsets and should make it last longer in the real world by being able to deform when dropped or hit rather than breaking. The joint venture will supply the OLED backplane glass substrates for Samsung Mobile Display along with the broader Korean market. The OLED market is expected to grow rapidly with many smart phones moving to the screens for the superior color reproduction and image quality. At the same time, the screens tend to use less power than traditional

Qualcomm and Ericsson have completed the first VoLTE handover of a voice call from an LTE network to a WCDMA one, paving the way for high-speed smartphones that can handle voice as well as data. The proof-of-concept took place in late December, using a Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 3G/LTE based device on an Ericsson network, seamlessly transitioning the in-progress call to 3G when LTE coverage was no longer available. “As LTE networks are deployed alongside 3G networks,” Cristiano Amon, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm said in a statement, ”the ability for multimode 3G/LTE mobile devices to connect to different network technologies will be an important part of providing the best possible mobile voice and data experience to consumers.” The demo used Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC), allowing a single radio to shift a call between 3G and 4G networks. Existing LTE devices have used CSFB (circuit-switched fallback technology) which automatically step a radio down f

We have some good news for owners of the HTC Sensation smartphone. A press release has been published that says the HTC Sensation will get the official Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update soon. HTC doesn’t give a specific date that the update will come, simply saying it will come out OTA soon. HTC also dropped information on a new version of the Sensation that is coming to the Netherlands. The new version of the HTC Sensation will be identical hardware wise to the existing version and the difference will be that the new phone comes in an ice white color. That ice white color looks more like silver to me. TheHTC press release says that the phone will land on March 1 in the Netherlands and will already be running Android 4.0 when it hits. There is no word on an official launch date in other countries. The software update will bring some nice new features such as faster browsing and the ability to unlock the device using face recognition. The update also offers more integration with Goo

Facebook‘s mobile strategy faces renewed attention IPO excitement cools, with the company citing cellphone users as a huge source of potential growth though warning it is currently at the mercy of Apple and Android. According to Facebook’s SEC filing, 425m active users accessed the social network while mobile in December 2011 alone, more than half of the total number of active users in fact. The figures are likely to renew speculation that Facebook will try to make its own play for the smartphone market. Currently, Facebook points out, there are no mobile adverts in play, despite the huge potential audience for advertising. It’s an issue the company suggests might in fact negatively impact Facebook’s bottom line: even if mobile users grow, they’re not contributing to Facebook’s purse. “Although the substantial majority of our mobile users also access and engage with Facebook on personal computers where we display advertising, our users could decide to increasingly access our products p

A French court has fined Google in one has to be has to be one of the most idiotic court cases I’ve ever heard of. The complaint was brought against Google by French company called Bottin Cartographes, who offers mapping services to businesses at a price. Google operates its Google Maps service in France offering similar mapping services at no cost. The French mapping company didn’t appreciate the fact that Google is offering a similar product at no charge. The company filed suit in French court claiming that Google is abusing its dominant position in the market by offering Google Maps for free. According to reports, the French court actually upheld the complaint against Google and fined Google $660,000 for offering free Maps. The $660,000 fine is damages to be paid to Bottin Cartographes and there is an additional fine of €15,000 dollar bringing Google’s total out-of-pocket expense for this debacle to $680,000. A spokesperson from Google France says that the search giant is currently

Sony is to become a leaner, swifter, less regimented organization, new CEO and President Kaz Hirai has promised, cutting through the swathes of structure that have seen projects delayed and efforts duplicated.Freshly elevated this week, Hirai’s first challenge was to weather the storm of a worse-than-expected fiscal Q3 2011 report; his next, the WSJ reports, is persuading the final stubborn hold-outs at Sony that “if we don’t turn this around, we could be sitting in some serious trouble.” Hirai says that corporate structure is what has kept Sony from capitalizing on product innovations, and in fact has kept the company trapped in the past. “We really need to buckle down and be realistic,” he told the newspaper. “I don’t think everybody is on board, but I think people are coming around to the idea.” To deliver on that, Hirai will use the same strategy that worked so well in Sony’s gaming division. The exec turned the PlayStation around from $2bn losses to profit in just four years, thou

The massive flooding in Thailand has severely limited the supply hard drives for the computing industry all around the world. One of the companies that was hard hit by the flooding was Seagate. I’m sure Seagate, and the computer industry hoped that the hard disk drive shortage would be over this year, but it doesn’t seem that will be the case. Seagate is now reporting that the shortage of hard drives will continue throughout 2012, just as some research firms were predicting. Seagate is predicting the shortage of hard drives by the end of 2012 is likely to be about 150 million units. Computerworld reports that Seagate’s prediction is in line with estimates from research firms such as Gartner. Analysts have said all along that the biggest impact of the hard drive shortage wouldn’t be felt until this year. The flooding in Thailand already had a significant impact on shipments for Seagate in 2011. When the company reported its quarterly earnings, shipments were down 4% from the same quarte

Pentax has launched its latest interchangeable lens camera, the Pentax K-01 , designed by Marc Newson and compatible with standard Pentax K-mount DSLR lenses. Offered in black, silver or Newson-trademark yellow, the K-01 wraps an aluminum frame around a 16-megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor and a 3-inch 920k dot LCD preview display, delivering Full HD 1080p 30fps video recording (or 60fps 720p). There’s also 6fps burst still capture, and an ISO range of 100 to 25,600. The manual focus mode features a peaking system for swifter and more accurate adjustments, and there’s an easily twiddled mode dial and chunky controls. A pop-up glash and powered hotshoe are on the top, while ports include USB 2.0, AV out, HDMI and 3.5mm audio in. Although the K-01 will work with all of Pentax’s K-mount lenses, the company has also prepared a special super-slim option, the smc PENTAX-DA 40mm F2.8 XS, for those who want to keep the bulk down. It’s the world’s thinnest interchangeable lens, Pentax claims. Pentax

We have talked about the tiny little Raspberry Pi media streamer several times in the past. This is a little mainboard you can buy for about $35 that hooks your TV and allows you to stream all sorts of content to the big-screen. In case you forget, the little board has an ARM processor integrated and ships with no case. It’s more like a bare-bones computer than something along the lines of the Boxee Box that is a complete finished product. Despite the small size, the Raspberry Pi has enough power to support 1080p video and can run the XBMC software. That XBMC software is a media center platform that works in a very similar way to the Boxee Box. There is a good reason for that similarity; Boxee was a spin-off from XBMC years ago. XBMC will come to the Raspberry Pi hardware in a form called Raspbmc, which is being worked on right now.

UK carrier Three has answered the (perhaps unasked) question of what you call a mobile hotspot when it’s not actually mobile: the Three Web Cube, packing a 3G HSPA+ connection into a fixed WiFi router. Promising plug-and-play simplicity, the box comes with a SIM pre-installed and a choice of tariffs with up to 15GB of data per month. A WiFi SSID and encryption password are preset, and once you plug the Web Cube into the mains it automatically starts sharing its HSPA+ connection. Up to five wireless clients can be connected at any one time, and the range is around 30 feet. Three says 2-5Mbps download speeds should be typical, though suggests peaks of up to 10Mbps could be achieved. Two packages will be offered, a month-to-month option at £15 with a £59.99 upfront hardware charge and 10GB of data, and a 24-month agreement for £15.99 per month with no upfront charge and 15GB of data. The carrier is targeting students, renters, those who frequently move and people who don’t want the hassle

This week twitter started a larger rollout of its enhance brand pages. We first caught wind of these new brand pages back in early December 2011 and the first page we saw was from Pepsi. Enhance brand pages allow different companies, brands, organizations, and others to set up twitter pages that more closely reflect the corporate personality and color schemes of the businesses. If you like those first few handful of pages that launched back in December from Coca-Cola, Pepsi, American Red Cross, and American Express you can count on seeing a lot more very soon. Yesterday, several new brand pages rolled out on twitter, including pages for NBC news, Volkswagen, the Huffington Post, and several others. A twitter spokesperson told Gigaom the rollout of enhanced brand pages would continue with more advertising partners and other companies and individuals getting their own enhance pages in the coming weeks and months. These enhanced brand pages are a good move for twitter because it wants to

Apple’s iMovie for iPad has some serious competition this morning, with video editing heavyweight Avid releasing Avid Studio for iPad. The new app, which comes in at under five bucks [iTunes link], brings video manipulation tools from Avid’s pro range of software to the iOS slate, accessing media stored on the iPad itself or imported via Apple’s Camera Connection Kit, and allowing clips to be combined using 3D animations, transitions, titles and soundtracks. Video and stills can be shot directly within the app itself, and browsed by album, event or face. There’s storyboarding support, a “Precision Trimmer” tool and on-the-fly cutting, as well as various fades and dissolves along with picture-in-picture support. Full title, subtitle and credits can be created. As for audio, Avid supplies some clips or you can import tracks from your own collection, with basic editing controls too. When you’re done, the end result can be pushed directly to Facebook or YouTube, via email, or exported over

IDC has offered up the latest statistics for the mobile phone market with its Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker data that follows the global market. According to the latest numbers, Apple is growing in a big way thanks to the new iPhone 4S that launched recently. In fact, massive sales success of the new iPhone model help Apple kick LG electronics out of the third-place spot in the global mobile phone vendor rankings. Last quarter Apple sat in the fifth-place spot on the list in the record-breaking quarter for iPhone 4S shipments propelled Cupertino up the list in a big way. That massive sales success also saw Apple besting mobile phone maker ZTE, pushing it into the fifth-place spot. The top spot remains firmly in the grasp of Nokia with Samsung taking second place spot. Apple shipped 37 million iPhones in Q4 to give it 8.7% of the global market. The 37 million shipment number is more than twice what Apple shipped in Q4 2010. It’s also worth noting that LG’s total sales volume declined f

Apple has poached another Microsoft exec, with ex-Xbox LIVE chief Robin Burrowes jumping to the Cupertino company where he will lead App Store marketing in Europe. Burrowes spent seven years in the Xbox division, MCV reports, and before that worked for MSN and media retailer HMV. It’s not the first time Apple has looked to execs with gaming experience to head its various iOS teams. Last year, the company hired Robert Saunders, formerly the lead of Nintendo’s PR team, to work on iOS app promotion, simultaneously grabbing Activision PR chief Nick Grange for a role “focussed on iPad hardware” that many assumed would be game-control related. More recently, Apple hired a new retail manager, John Browett, who had been CEO at European electronics retail chain Dixons. Apple declined to comment on Burrowes joining the company, and it’s unclear if the games-focused exec will be tasked with pushing the App Store as a gaming platform. The company has long been expected to make further inroads into

Nokia is currently in the midst of huge change for its smartphone business and is warning 2012 may be a tough year. Profits and revenue at the company have sagged, and much of the blame is on the lackluster sales of Nokia branded smartphones. Nokia continues to sell hoards of low-end and midrange mobile phones where profits are low, but has been unsuccessful in competing in the profitable high-end smartphone market. Nokia is changing that with the major tie up with Microsoft that will see numerous Windows Phone smartphones come to market this year. Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila warned yesterday that the impact the major changes in Nokia’s smartphone operations and the partnership with Microsoft for smartphone operating systems would affect the earnings at Nokia throughout most of 2012. Nokia made the announcement last week of a 73% decline in fourth-quarter earnings. Ollila said, “For a significant part of the year the transition will be seen in the results.” Nokia has failed so far to m

Reports of an iPad 3 reveal this month may have been premature, sources now claim, with Apple tipped to unveil its third-gen tablet in March but squeeze in a “strange” event before then. Although a February press event is still apparently on the calendar, Macotakara now says, it won’t see the debut of the new iPad: instead, that will take place the following month, reducing the expected time between the big reveal and sales starting. The rumors leave the purpose of the February event unclear. Details on the February press gathering are unknown, and only described as “strange”; however, it’s said to be a non-product related event. That could mean services, similar to the iBooks event earlier this month. The new iPad, meanwhile, will be shown off in early March, supposedly, then released later in the month. It’s unclear whether the refreshed model will be the iPad 3, as suspected until now, or the iPad 2S, a bridging model that will introduce a faster, Apple A6 processor and “Retina Disp

In the past, the White House has encouraged Americans to start petitions on the White House website. The White House has even promised to respond to any petition placed on its website that gets 25,000 signatures within a month’s time. Recently a petition was added to the website calling for the White House to investigate MPAA Chairman and CEO Chris Dodd on allegations of bribery. The call for an investigation was made after Dodd seemed to be threatening lawmakers that were voicing opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. The quote the landed Dodd in so much hot water was this: “This industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake,” Dodd told Fox News on Jan. 19. “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.” The petition at Whitehouse.gov called for an investigation into Dodd claiming that he publicly admitted bribing politi

Facebook may be looking at a $100m floatation, but it apparently only spent a few cents on photocopying the image gallery UI from Google+ and using it itself. The new Facebook layout floats a comments/Likes box over the right hand side of a black lightbox, Faceblog spotted, with the tweaked interface being rolled out to certain users already; Julien Girard snapped a shot of Mark Zuckerberg’s desk, shown below, for instance. It’s a layout that’s mighty similar to what Google+ already offers, and the latest example of the two social sites seemingly “borrowing” design cues from each other. As the screengrab below – the same photo, but shared on Google+ instead – illustrates, it’s tricky to tell the difference at first glance. Of course, you could well argue that there are limited ways in which you can set out images and comments, and this is definitely an improvement over the existing Facebook layout. There’s less scrolling involved to see comments and tags, for instance. It also allows F