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Apple

Submission + - Why Apple's products are 'Designed in California' (tuaw.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: Look at the back of your iPhone, or your iPad, or on the bottom of your Mac. You'll see the following words embossed somewhere: "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." Many Americans, all the way up to the President himself, have wondered why Apple has outsourced virtually all of its manufacturing overseas. At a dinner with several top US technology executives last year, President Obama asked Steve Jobs flat out what it would take to bring those jobs back to the US. According to Jobs, there's simply no way for it to happen.
Censorship

Submission + - Ron Paul says "Stop Internet Censorship" (house.gov) 2

Submitted by
SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: "Congressman and Presidential Candidate Ron Paul writes "SOPA and PIPA actually do is force website owners to police the internet; create entry barriers to the only relatively free and open medium of communication; and threaten to break the technological structure of the internet itself. They also violate our 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and our 4th Amendment freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.....

"As is typical of so many bills in Congress, SOPA and PIPA were not crafted to make life better for the American people, but rather were written at the behest of big business trying to enlist the federal government as its strong-arm. For example, the Motion Picture Association of America spent more than $1.2 million so far lobbying for their passage."
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook Engineers Built A Way Better Version Of G (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: A bunch of Facebook engineers – along with engineers from Twitter and MySpace – just admonished Google to "focus on the user" and "don't be evil."
Earlier this month, Google launched an optional feature called "Search plus your world." It integrates personalized content from social networks into Google search results.
Only, search plus your world doesn't include any content from Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace – the biggest social networks out there.
It does, however, include lots of content from Google's social network, Google Plus.
Some engineers at Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace think this is unfair to users – and to demonstrate why, they've created a modified version of Google, which you can access on a site called Focusontheuser.org.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-twitter-and-myspace-engineers-build-a-tool-to-show-how-googles-social-search-should-work-2012-1#ixzz1kJl0bEoS
Facebook

Submission + - Is Facebook a Central Bank, Too? (forbes.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: Facebook’s 27-year-old founder, Mark Zuckerberg, isn’t usually mentioned in the same breath as Ben Bernanke, the 58-year-old head of the Federal Reserve. But Facebook’s early adventures in the money-creating business are going well enough that the central-bank comparison gets tempting.

Everything started quietly, in 2009, with the experimental launch of Facebook Credits, billed as “the safe and easy way to buy things on Facebook.” Anyone who chipped in $5 from a Paypal account, Visa card or the like, could do the equivalent of changing money on an overseas trip. Voila! — $5 turned into 50 Facebook Credits.
Chrome

Submission + - Chrome sandboxing makes it the most secure browser (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: A new study by security vendor Accuvant Labs concludes that Google Chrome is more secure than rivals Firefox and Internet Explorer, largely because of Chrome's sandboxing and plug-in security.

The research was funded by Google, which might make any reasonable person suspicious of its conclusions. Accuvant insists that Google gave it "a clear directive to provide readers with an objective understanding of relative browser security" and that the conclusions in the paper "are those of Accuvant Labs, based on our independent data collection." Accuvant also made the supporting data available as a separate download so that it can be scrutinized by other researchers.
Blackberry

Submission + - RIM's troubles continue: BlackBerry Playbook costi (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: RIM can’t catch a break. Not only is the company coping with dismal PlayBook tablet sales, it’s also taking a near half-billion-dollar hit for sitting inventory that must now be sold at rock-bottom prices.

RIM announced on Friday that the company wouldn’t be meeting its financial targets for the year, primarily due to the unsuccessful performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. It pushed 150,000 units this quarter, compared with 250,000 last quarter, and 500,000 in the first quarter of the year.
Piracy

Submission + - Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.
Media

Submission + - Social Media Juices Black Friday (forbes.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: Consumers and retailers alike zero in on Black Friday with laser intensity; one for the deals, the other for the profits. Each year retailers try to outdo each other by opening their stores at insanely early hours. There is even an “official” Black Friday website dedicated to the deals, ads and other promotions big retailers are doing to get you to come in and buy.

All the hoopla around Black Friday and the maddening throng of Wal-Mart shoppers flies in the face of what social media is suppose to do, namely engage buyers more effectively. Does opening a story two hours earlier each year really engage more buyers? This year Wal-Mart is opening at 10pm Thanksgiving Day, just in case buyers can’t wait to buy what will be on the shelves at 8am Friday morning.
Idle

Submission + - The $200,000-a-Year Mine Worker (wsj.com)

Submitted by wasimkadak
wasimkadak writes: One of the fastest-growing costs in the global mining industry are workers like James Dinnison: the 25-year-old high-school dropout from Western Australia makes $200,000 a year running drills in underground mines to extract gold and other minerals.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Killing Silverlight (zdnet.com) 1

Submitted by SharkLaser
SharkLaser writes: Silverlight 5 might be last version released by Microsoft. Several industry insiders and partners for the last few weeks have heard from their own Microsoft sources that there won't be new versions released after Silverlight 5. Status on service packs and support for Silverlight is unclear, as Microsoft haven't yet released lifecycle support end date even for the previous Silverlight 4. By their support page they will give full year head-up before ending support. With Adobe ending development of Flash for mobile browsers and Microsoft ending development of Silverlight, HTML5 video looks a lot more promising. But will content providers be able to give out their material without DRM and how does HTML5 perform with non-video side of Flash and Silverlight?

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