News Corp.’s board has approved a proposal to split the media conglomerate into two segments, separating its publishing business from its entertainment operations.
The process should take about a year and will require the board to approve a a final detailed plan. The split is expected to be formally announced today.
“One company will house entertainment businesses like 20th Century Fox, Fox broadcast network and Fox News Channel while another houses the publishing assets, which include The Wall Street Journal and the Times of London along with HarperCollins book publishing and News Corp.’s education business,” reports WSJ.
Publishing interests currently generate significantly less profits than News Corp.’s TV and film operations, and continues to face competition from the growing popularity of online news outlets.
“For the entertainment company, its overall profit margin will be higher without publishing,” suggests WSJ. “Its stock market valuation is expected to rise above that of News Corp.’s current valuation, analysts say, as the publishing assets are seen as a drag on the stock.”
“Moreover, without the taint of the phone-hacking scandal at News Corp.’s British newspapers, the entertainment company may have an easier time doing certain acquisitions, say people familiar with the situation.”
Former Disney technical director and Nickelodeon animation supervisor, Sang-Jin Bae, thinks kids have become “digital illiterates.”
He describes the students who come into his animation classes at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts as falling into three groups: “There are the pure geeks who love technology,” he explains. There are those trying to understand. And then there is the biggest group: “Those who couldn’t care less.”
“The kids I have, and that is roughly two dozen of the brightest young digital artists a semester, often have no idea what Microsoft Word is,” he says, noting a dumbing down of essential computing skills. “They can’t tell a Mac from a PC. And forget Excel. They will not use email. It’s a constant struggle to have them simply stop SMSing me.”
To make matters worse, software developers are creating simpler versions of their products. He cites Windows 8 as an example. Even AutoCAD’s Maya, a professional tool, has a hair animation function that has been re-designed for the “non-techie.” Apps like Instagram also cater to these digital illiterates.
“It has gotten to the point now that if it takes something basic like a password, they can’t figure it out,” suggests Bae. “Application developers are in a race to the bottom.”
A Nielsen survey on 4G wireless trends suggests teenagers are leading the transition from 3G to 4G technology. The report notes that 63 percent of teenagers under 18 report interest in switching from a 3G to a 4G device by the end of the year.
The report adds that 4G usage has risen from 1.4 percent to 7.6 percent of American wireless consumers since 2011.
“Consumers under the age of 34 are the mostly likely to have switched from 3G to the faster 4G network and consumers that have adopted 4G are five times more likely to consider dumping a high-speed Internet subscription with a cable company in favor of 4G hardware as a replacement,” reports Digital Trends.
The report also notes that only 46 percent of respondents reported satisfaction with the 4G device’s battery life. “Many people stated that they would attempt to preserve battery life by switching between 3G and 4G service during the day,” explains the post.
However, while people report satisfaction with their 4G devices, less than ten percent of 4G owners cited the 4G connection as the most important factor in the purchase.
Smithsonian takes a look at the new generation of robots that are increasingly starting to learn how to think and adapt.
“It’s the first time we’ve had this level of technology that allows machines to solve problems on their own, to interact with their environment, to analyze visual images, and to manipulate their environment based on that,” explains technologist and author Martin Ford, who believes that within a decade machines will surpass humans in doing routine work.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil believes machines will soon be more intelligent than humans, but we should find it encouraging rather than threatening.
Kurzweil suggests “that by mid-century, humans and robots will merge in some form,” notes the article. “Maybe we’ll be able to live forever in a body of artificial parts. Or our consciousness will live on inside a computer, a kind of humanoid software. Whatever shape it takes, Kurzweil already has a name for it — singularity.”
“Five years ago, he likes to point out, who would have thought that hundreds of millions of people around the world would be walking around with devices as powerful as smartphones,” notes the article. “Or that almost half a million people could have jobs in the business of making mobile apps.”
The article cites various examples of robot tech development and examines possible implications regarding human jobs. (Be sure to check out the video of the i-SODOG Robot Dog that can be trained through your iOS or Android smartphone.)
Beginning next Monday, free Wi-Fi will be available at some New York City subway stations courtesy of Google.
“Boingo Wireless, the Wi-Fi provider well known for its wireless service for airports, has teamed up with Google Offers, the search company’s Web page for getting deals, to offer the free Internet,” reports The New York Times.
Google will foot the bill from Monday until September 7. Beyond that, Boingo will offer service plans for its Wi-Fi, such as “$10 per month for unlimited use on any two Internet-enabled devices, or $8 per month for unlimited access on a mobile device,” details NYT.
Boingo also hopes for more sponsorships to provide free Wi-Fi in the NYC subway system regularly, said a spokesperson for the company.
The provider says its Wi-Fi will be available in 36 subway stations by the end of 2012 and in 270 stations within the next five years.
Researchers have discovered the presence of a worm now known as “ACAD/Medre.A” which is designed to steal AutoCAD documents such as designs and blueprints and send them to email addresses in China.
While the worm has been centered mainly in Peru and neighboring countries, it is not restricted there.
Written in AutoLISP, AutoCAD’s scripting language, this worm has been spread through infected AutoCAD templates.
“After some configuration, ACAD/Medre.A will begin sending the different AutoCAD drawings that are opened by e-mail to a recipient with an e-mail account at the Chinese 163.com Internet provider,” wrote Righard Zwienenberg of Eset in an analysis of the worm’s activity.
“I don’t think it’s an APT. It’s kind of an uncontrolled attack,” suggests Dimitry Bestuzhev, head of Global Research and Analysis for Kaspersky in Latin America. “It’s hard to say who the target is, and it doesn’t seem to be government sponsored.”
“When it’s a targeted attack, they try to limit the propagation to machines they care about, and that’s not the case with this,” he adds.
Travel site Orbitz has segmented its website into Mac and PC users based on the fact that Mac users will typically be willing to pay $20 to $30 more per night for a hotel room, reports the Wall Street Journal.
“The sort of targeting undertaken by Orbitz is likely to become more commonplace as online retailers scramble to identify new ways in which people’s browsing data can be used to boost online sales,” notes WSJ.
Forrester Research places the average household income for Mac computer owners at $98,560, as compared to the $74,452 average income for PC owners.
“From an analytics perspective, targeting by operating system and pricing accordingly may not be such a bad idea,” adds CNET. “The bonehead move of the century is Orbitz yapping about it. Orbitz did note that pricing by OS is just an experiment.”
Execs at Orbitz point out that the experiment is merely highlighting different offers to Mac and PC visitors, not offering the same room to different users at different prices. According to Orbitz CEO Barney Harford, the news has been misinterpreted since the full story was hidden behind the WSJ pay wall for many readers.
“[It’s] nonsense that we’d charge Mac users more for the same hotel, which is unfortunately the incorrect impression that many readers seem to be drawing from this article’s ‘subscriber content preview,'” he writes via email to NPR. “However, just as Mac users are willing to pay more for higher end computers, at Orbitz we’ve seen that Mac users are 40 percent more likely to book 4 or 5 star hotels as compared to PC users, and [that’s] just one of many factors that determine which hotels to recommend a given customer as part of our efforts to show customers the most relevant hotels possible.”
After a month of beta testing, Mozilla has released its official Firefox app for Android.
The app “sports a slick new interface, incredibly fast startup and browsing speeds, support for Adobe Flash, and new HTML5 features,” reports VentureBeat.
The Firefox app functions with Android 2.2 devices and higher, while Google’s Chrome beta app only works on Android 4.0 devices. “That gives the new Firefox a potential market of around 94 percent of Android devices, while Chrome only has 7 percent of the market running Android 4.0 or newer,” according to the post.
“The new Android Firefox app isn’t just fast, it’s also gorgeous,” notes VentureBeat. “When you first launch it, you’re presented with a start screen that features your most recently and frequently visited sites. There’s a new tab interface that’s a far leap beyond the previous Firefox app, and the mere act of scrolling through websites feels smoother.”
Although Firefox claims to operate up to two times as fast as Chrome, the hands-on review suggests that the two services on average operate at similar speeds on most sites.
ETCentric previously reported that a new GPS-based Facebook feature called “Find Friends Nearby” was coming out of development and would be available on smartphones running iOS and Android.
Also called “Friendshake,” the app was quietly made available on Monday. We have an update to this story.
Just hours after launching the new app, Facebook took it down, telling Wired magazine: “This wasn’t a formal release — this was just something that a few engineers were testing. With all tests, some get released as full products, others don’t.”
The app quickly received the nickname the “Stalker App,” because as The Hollywood Reporter notes, “When an app uses GPS to tell strangers that you’re nearby, it’s going to raise privacy concerns, the same ones that surfaced about other geographically social apps like Glancee, which was acquired by Facebook two months ago.”
Facebook is emphasizing that this app release was only a test, not a product launch.
Zynga is attempting to provide its 290 million players a better chance at syncing up with others to play games on various devices and platforms.
At the company’s second annual Zynga Unleashed event in San Francisco, it unveiled “a unified platform to bring players together across portals such as the Web, Android and iOS, Facebook and Google+,” reports AllThingsD.
The idea was created around the Zynga message center, which contains “a player’s friends list, an activity feed of friends’ gaming statuses, and a list of gaming suggestions based on what games you and your friends are already playing,” explains the article.
The more social the games can become, the better it is for engagement, which is precisely what Zynga and developers want.
“Players can also connect using the newly launched real-time multiplayer feature which, just like it sounds, allows multiple players across separate devices to play with — or against — one another simultaneously,” according to AllThingsD.
The platform is set to start rolling out in the “near future” on Zynga’s website, Facebook and mobile devices.
Apple has released a standalone app for podcasts ahead of its scheduled release of iOS 6.
The free app is called “Podcasts” and works on iOS devices running 5.1 or later, including both iPads and iPhones. It will sync with iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC, so long as they’re updated to iTunes 10.6.3.
“It expectedly offers a variety of ways to browse and discover podcasts among the thousands available (including a new Top Stations feature that groups select podcasts by category), as well as the ability to either stream episodes or download them for offline use,” details Engadget.
“The Podcasts application for iOS also includes the ability to share shows or specific episodes with other users via e-mail, Twitter or text message,” notes Apple Insider in a more detailed hands-on review. “Presumably with the launch of iOS 6 this fall, Facebook integration will also become part of the Podcasts application.”
Verizon and T-Mobile have agreed to an Advanced Wireless Services spectrum swap that would add LTE capabilities to T-Mobile’s network, reports CNET. The deal must first secure approval from the FCC, and then would allow T-Mobile to begin building its LTE support.
“For iPhone users, this deal is particularly interesting, especially if you’ve already been using Apple’s smartphone on T-Mobile’s existing HSPA+ network,” notes the post. “T-Mobile already offers tremendous support for the iPhone on its network even though it is not officially part of Apple’s sales partnership.”
Current iPhone models do not support LTE connectivity, although the long rumored iPhone 5 would presumably include this technology. T-Mobile is clearly preparing for this release.
“By adding 4G speeds, T-Mobile would have to be high on Apple’s partner list (and high on the lists of iPad owners looking for cheaper data plans), though no official deals have been announced” explains CNET.
The trailer for “Breaking Dawn – Part 2” — the final installment of the “Twilight” series — has broken the Yahoo! Movies record for unique streams with over 7 million views in 24 hours.
“Yahoo! Movies attracts over 27 million unique users a month, so 7 million streams is a sizable achievement for a single day,” explains a Yahoo! spokesman.
“Twilight” studio Summit released its trailer on Wednesday in an exclusive window partnership with Yahoo! Movies for 24 hours. The previous record-holder was “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1.” Even though the trailer is no longer an exclusive, its viewing numbers are holding strong.
In October 2011 users downloaded “The Avengers” trailer on iTunes 10 million times in one day. In December 2011 the trailer for “The Dark Knight Rises” received 12.5 million downloads in a single day.
“It’s possible that the discrepancy may be the size of the different platforms — ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ was, after all, a record breaker for Yahoo! — or simply a commentary on the ways in which different audiences interact with material offered to them, but it’s also a strong possibility that, in this year’s conflict between superheroes and vampire romance, it’s the guys in the skintight suits who’ll emerge victorious,” comments Digital Trends.
“Apple is making potentially significant changes to the search algorithm in the App Store, at least according to some app developers,” reports TechCrunch.
“If you’re a developer or publisher counting on a well-chosen name to help with visibility, things could get tougher from here on out. But if you’re a popular and well-reviewed app, things might be looking up,” notes the post.
Apple acquired app discovery start-up Chomp in February, but developers are just beginning to see the results of its topic detection.
Developers report changes in Apple’s search algorithm which seems to now focus more on downloads, ratings, and themes rather than simple keywords.
“Chomp’s proprietary algorithm learns the functions and topics of apps, so you can search based on what apps do, not just what they’re called,” explains Chomp.
TechCrunch uses the BestParking app as an example, noting that this app is now displayed as the top result for searches such as “chicago parking” and “sf parking.” The post notes that this change benefits generalized apps that serve multiple geographies and possibly hurts app developers who focus on local markets.
Start-up CloudMine originally envisioned developing a sophisticated data sync and storage app solution.
Over time, its efforts transitioned to the development and launch of a new back-end platform designed to streamline the app development process for others.
“CloudMine wants to take the back-end focus away from engineers so they can focus on the part users actually interact with,” reports Digital Trends. “To be specific, tasks like data storage, user account management, password encryption, any sort of permissioning, dealing with public and private data, and scaling.”
During its beta period, the service charged for pay-as-you-go API usage until CloudMine learned that approach made its clients nervous. Now clients have the option of paying 5-cents per active user or working with CloudMine to create a custom pricing plan.
“CloudMind is a product of Startup Weekend (which it’s now a global sponsor of), and though it’s in its infancy, it’s already home to about 1,500 clients who have made about 1,500 apps with its service,” explains the post. “They range in shape, size, and form — from college kids building weekend projects to creative agencies working as third party builders-for-hire to Fortune 500 companies.”
