Following word earlier this week that the iPhone 5 had received final certification in China, Apple today announced that it will be bringing not only the iPhone 5 but also the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad to the country over the next several weeks.
Apple today announced the Wi-Fi versions of iPad mini and fourth generation iPad with Retina display will be available in China on Friday, December 7, and iPhone 5 will be available on Friday, December 14. iPad mini and the new fourth generation iPad with Retina display are currently available in 42 countries, and iPhone 5 is available in 47 countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK.
China now accounts for 15% of Apple's revenues, making the new product launches a significant development for the company. Apple's Chinese product launches have typically lagged well behind those in other countries, but the company has been working to shorten those gaps. The iPhone 4S launched in China three months after the device's debut, while the third-generation iPad took four months to arrive in the country.
With today's announcement, the iPhone 5 will be arriving in China roughly two and a half months after the initial round of launches, while the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad are coming to China just a month after their debut in the U.S. and other first-round markets.
Apple does not allow the iPhone 5 to join a carrier's LTE network until it passes the company's own internal tests, according to Swiss cell carrier Swisscom. The report from Telecoms.com (by way of The Next Web), says that Apple enables LTE support on existing iPhone 5 models only after first testing the carrier network itself.
This week, however, a Swisscom spokesperson told Telecoms.com that: "Apple only enables 4G access after testing their device on an operator's live network."
Swisscom launched its LTE network this week although the iPhone 5 was not available as an LTE device at launch. "Apple will provide a software update in due course," the firm said in a press release.
Apple has been selling the iPhone 5 in countries where it doesn't officially support LTE on any carriers, though most carriers have at least initial plans to support LTE in coming years with many in the midst of full LTE rollouts.
Telecoms.com quotes Alcatel Lucent CTO Marcus Weldon saying that Apple was "a bit big for its boots" with the policy, hinting that it was unusual for a handset manufacturer to have such control over its handsets. However, this has been the case since the iPhone first launched nearly 5 years ago.
Apple has exerted extraordinary control over the iPhone in a number of ways, including providing most tech support and replacements via its 800-number and the Apple Retail Store rather than through the carriers, as well as Apple forbidding carriers from preinstalling any of its own software applications or services on the iPhone.
The Oculus Rift, an incredibly successful Kickstarter project determined to take a modern crack at the VR headsets of years past, is ready to help offer the “in the game” experience that so many gamers crave. Like many Kickstarter projects that see explosive growth, the Oculus Rift team wasn’t prepared to deliver so many headsets within the original deadlines. To explain how delivery will work now that the Kickstarter is over, the team published an update to the project on their website.
Few Kickstarter projects start with the expectation that the project is going to explode out of the gate. The Oculus team admits to originally only planning to have to make a few hundred units. By the end of the Kickstarter they were faced with the challenge of shipping more than 7500. Production scale changes dramatically with that sort of growth, so the team had to work hard to create a solution that still managed to get units in the hands of developers within a time frame that was somewhat close to the original projection of four months. In their update, the team does a fantastic job breaking down exactly why Oculus units won’t be shipping until late March 2013.
The final designs for the Oculus Rift developer headset features a 7-inch display with 1280×800 resolution. The new displays are said to be a marked improvement over the demo units that were originally made for the project, but are also 30 grams heavier and 1.4 inches larger. The final build features an optimized motion sensor capable of higher refresh rates and a magnetometer that was previously not available. The end result is a better screen and a sensor that can more accurately track the movements of the user, ultimately creating a more immersive experience.
The Oculus team also announced additional support and ongoing work on adding support for popular game engines to the SDK. The video above demonstrates the work done with the Unreal 3 engine, however the SDK will also include Unity integration with the hopes that support will be included in the engines themselves in the future.
The Developer Center for Oculus Rift was announced as well, with plans to provide developers with a single place for SDK access, forums, and a support system that will make it easy for developers to communicate directly with the Oculus team.
Despite the delay the Oculus team is doing a great job of keeping everyone informed, and it is clear by this update that the team has everything they need to deliver an exciting product. Accessories like this one live or die on the support from developers willing to make their games work well on the hardware. With glowing reviews, like the one our own Sam Cook gave to an the early prototype of Rift, and the constant communication and updates seen by the team, I think it’s pretty clear that we will see a lot of support for this generation’s VR headset.
One might say the standard umbrella is already perfectly designed — compact, resistant to all but very strong winds, and it generally keeps your top half dry. The kind of storm in which an umbrella wouldn’t do the job is the kind of storm where nothing other than staying inside would help. A new umbrella design by Je Sung Park and Woo Jung Kwon aims to not only change the umbrella’s core design, but to make it adjustable given the power of a storm.
Called the Air Umbrella, the concept removes the plastic top from the umbrella and replaces it with a wind shield. The design of the Air Umbrella calls for air to be sucked through the bottom, then shot out of the top in a pattern that mimics the standard canopy. Power and canopy size controls reside toward the bottom of the shaft, providing users with the ability to strengthen the force of the air and widen the canopy in order to adjust for heavier rains. Not only would these features protect against storms when a standard umbrella normally may not, but the air curtain has a better chance to survive strong winds than a flimsy nylon covering. Removing the canopy also dispenses with minutes shaking all of the water off before you bring it inside.
It’s worth noting that if the umbrella is designed to shoot rain away from your head through an air pump, it would almost certainly shoot that rain onto surrounding innocent bystanders.
The Air Umbrella is also designed with a simple adjustable handle, so the user can rest their arm at whatever height they desire when holding the umbrella, an option left out of standard umbrellas.
Though still a concept and assuming the wind curtain is actually strong enough, the design has one pretty significant flaw — battery life. If a storm is particularly strong, the highest power output and widest curtain could conceivably drain the battery quickly, while a longer trek through the rain would significantly drain the battery as well. What happens when you trek through the rain , use a significant portion of the battery, then it’s still raining on the way home? It’ll be annoying to have to carry extra batteries or a charger.
Whatever the case with the power supply may be, the umbrella is still only a concept, so whatever kinks could arise are probably already being addressed. The design does seem like a great alternative to an umbrella where the plastic canopy turns inside out at the first gust of wind, we just wish the designers went with the term “Airbrella.”
While the first official third-party accessories supporting Apple's new Lightning standard have just started hitting the market, MacRumors has also been following the efforts of unauthorized accessory manufacturers such as iPhone5mod who have been cracking the standard to produce their own chips and connectors.
iPhone5mod has already released a series of cables, docks, and adapters based on the Lightning standard as they continue refining their processes, and the company today announced its third-generation Lightning connector that is "almost identical" to Apple's implementation.
Furthermore, iPhone5mod has posted an inside look at its new production facilities, which are three times larger than its previous facilities and now support as many as 40 workers alongside increased automation. A video overview of the facility and a series of photos provide an interesting glimpse at what goes into production of these cables and other accessories.
Apple is keeping tight control over official Lightning connectors, and we've heard that supplies are currently limited to just a handful of third-party vendors with many others having to wait until next year to receive access to the connector hardware. Those tight supplies and Apple's relatively slow progress on its own and third-party accessories have left it open to companies such as iPhone5mod seeking to meet customer demand.
With Apple said to be launching its revamped iTunes 11 "as soon as" today as the company rushes to meet its already-postponed goal of a November release, 9to5Mac reports that AppleCare support representatives are currently being seeded with prerelease versions of the new software.
It is unclear if these builds point to a release today, as the WSJ predicted, and if they are the final versions. Either way, with AppleCare employees getting their hands on the new app, we're expecting a launch soon.
The new iTunes brings a substantial overhaul, including a revamped player, a redesigned store based on the layout currently seen in on iOS devices, and new iCloud features for streaming media and syncing progress.
Designers at We Are Dorothy have outdone themselves with posters featuring musicians and song with colors in their names. Speaking to Popular Science, designer Ali Johnson discusses where they found inspiration for the 154 artists in "The Colour of Popular Music" and 576 tracks in "The Colour of Song." Visit We Are Dorothy if you want to know more about the snazzy color wheels, or if you're interesting in picking up a print — either for yourself or as a pretty awesome gift. Limited edition signed prints cost 100 ($160), and regular prints run 30 ($48).
It's tomorrow. You know, the day after yesterday. Billions of days after a yesterday far, far away, and at least a couple of days after the yesterday-that-shall-not-be-named. It's also the day before the day after tomorrow, which is millions of days before future tomorrow — a place we'd like to visit. But we can't visit, because we've passed it. We've flown by so many tomorrows that we've arrived at yesterday, and back again — the future of the past, of the future. And boy are our arms tired. So let's take a break and chat, today, for 90 seconds on the verge of eternity.
Stories of the day:
Microsoft says Windows Phone 7.8 update coming in 'early 2013'
Leaked 'Destiny' concept art shows what Bungie has in store after 'Halo'
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Today has been a big numbers day. First, we learned from IBM that the iPad dominated online shopping this Cyber Monday for tablet use. Then, we heard from Monetate that online shopping in general is shifting consumers toward mobile devices, again, dominated by the iPad. With all this research floating around, Asymco analyst Horace Dediu ran some figures of his own and discovered that Android phones are more popular than ever, but consumers aren't really using them to their full potential.
First off, it is important to note that Android-based phones account for almost 75 percent of the smartphone market while iPhones account for about 15 percent. ABI Research recently reported that the iPad dominates the tablet market with 55 percent of the market share, but there are still more Android-based devices in the world than there are iOS-based devices.
With that in mind, Asymco determined that, in the U.S., Android-based devices captured 21 percent of mobile shopping between Thanksgiving day and Black Friday this year, while iOS devices captured 77 percent. Dediu calls this the "Android Engagement Paradox." Even though Android devices outnumber iOS devices, the latter mopped the floor when it came to website visits during the biggest shopping event of the year.
According to Dediu, iPhones contributed to about two thirds of online traffic and Android one third. As far as tablets are concerned, the iPad contributed to 88 percent, while the next highest was from Kindle and Nook traffic with 5.5 percent.
Dediu's research led him to question why Android users don't engage with their phones more. "I find it surprising that US Android users would behave so differently only two years after the platform began to be widely adopted," he said. "That pettern is not happening with iOS even after five years and certainly not with the iPad which is about as old as most Android brands."
According to Dediu, shopping is not the only contradiction with Android devices and their uses. Developers and publishers have reported differences in consumption on iOS versus Android as well.
There is no research to explain why the Android Engagement Paradox exists. Much of Asymco's research is based on online shopping, not app usage, so the quality and quantity of apps is not part of the equation. While there are a lot of mid-grade models of Android phones, some of the mosre expensive devices, including Samsung's Galaxy Tab, run on Android, so it is not a matter of financial status. It is simply an unknown paradox.
Were you disappointed with Apple's Maps release this fall? Don't worry, Apple was too. Before canning Scott Forstall and sending John Browett packing last month, Apple issued an apology, promising to fix its mapping application.
Scott Forstall, as the senior vice president of iOS software, was deemed responsible for the maps failure, but apparently, he's not the only one being punished – Apple has also fired Richard Williamson, the manager who oversaw the mapping team.
According to Bloomberg, Williamson was pushed out by Eddy Cue, who has taken over Apple's iOS division.
Cue has also taken steps to obtain outside help, allegedly contacting mapping company TomTom NV for assistance. While Apple used Yelp to provide points of interest for its maps, that partnership hasn't worked out well – a lot of the data has proven to be inaccurate, leading to improper directions and incorrect location information.
With TomTom's help and POI data, Apple could make huge improvements to Maps. TomTom has a huge (and more importantly accurate) database of locations to draw from, which are constantly updated by its users.
There's no word on who will replace Williamson, but there is an entire team in place dedicated to repairing Apple's Maps. There's already been headway made towards fixing satellite imagery over the U.K. and improving location labels in the U.S., so it shouldn't be long before Apple has a much improved mapping application.
Facebook today announced that it has added iTunes Store digital gift cards to its Facebook Gifts platform, making it easier for users to send iTunes credit to their networks of Facebook friends.
Starting today with Facebook Gifts, you can instantly gift your friends iTunes digital gifts and recommend albums, movies, games, apps, and more available on the iTunes Store.
Search for a specific song or album to recommend, or let your friend decide. iTunes digital gifts are available for $10, $15, $25, or $50.
AllThingsDnotes that the partnership offers increased visibility for the iTunes Store and gives Facebook a part of what is currently estimated to be a $260 million business in iTunes Store gift cards for third-party retailers.
Per Apple's last 10-K, the company generated $7.5 billion from the iTunes Store during fiscal year 2012. Industry sources say that more than $2 billion of that revenue comes directly from iTunes gift cards. Sources also tell us that existing retailers who sell iTunes gift cards (like Best Buy, Target and the like) usually keep around 13 percent of each gift-card dollar sold.
So that adds up to around, say, a $260 million-dollar market size for physical iTunes cards split among participating retailers, of which Facebook will now be an active participant. That pie is small compared to Facebook's overall revenue ($3.71 billion in 2011), but another digital product with less overhead and high demand is definitely a win for Facebook's Gifts department.
Apple and Facebook have had a bit of a rocky history, with the two companies having sparred over Apple's efforts to offer Facebook integration in its failed Ping social networking service for iTunes. The companies have, however, been working more closely together recently, with systemwide Facebook integration now included in iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion.
Belgium-iPhone.Lesoir.be claims that Apple will be delivering the new 21.5" iMac to Apple Premium Resellers in Belgium starting on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the 27" iMac model is still believed to be scheduled for December.
The site also believes that the new iMac would be available for online orders at approximately the same time.
Separately, we received an unconfirmed tip saying that the new iMacs would be ready to order tomorrow, Tuesday, November 27th. We're not sure if the time difference (6 hours behind U.S. Eastern) explains the conflicting time frames or if one (or both) are simply wrong. Neither sources has a track record, but both guesses are certainly realistic. Apple originally claimed that the 21.5" iMac would begin shipping in November.
Update: Purported email sent to resellers from a distributor:
At the start of this month Samsung announced that channel sales of its mini-tablet-sized smartphone, the Galaxy Note II, had passed three million unit sales in 37 days on sale. Now the Korean mobile maker has announced that cumulative global channel sales of the device have exceeded five million after around two months since launch.
Samsung does not typically break out device sales to consumers but its channel sales measure provides an indication of how much end-user demand its sales channels are experiencing.
The Note II channel sales announcement was made in a Korean press release put out by Samsung – h/t to TNW for spotting. Samsung’s release suggests sales of the Note II are evenly spread across all regions where it’s on sale including Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa.
The original Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note II are larger than a typical smartphone, but smaller than a mini tablet — leading to the term ‘phablet’ to be coined to describe this phone-cum-tablet category.
Five million channel sales in around two months is an impressive figure for a device that, by merit of being so large, is a relatively acquired taste compared to more average sized smartphones. For context, Apple’s latest iPhone, the iPhone 5, sold more than five million units in its first three days of sale. Apple’s figure refers to sales to end users, rather than channel shipments.
Black Friday online shopping sales were up 26% this year, the number of people driving to brick and mortar stores increased even faster says Inrix. Congestion was up 32.5% this year according to the traffic data Inrix now pulls from over 100 million drivers. This and another report about Thanksgiving traffic show the quiet giant is intent on raising its profile before its planned 2013 IPO.
You might not even realize that you’re already an Inrix user. Sure, in the wake of Apple’s #MapsFail, traffic app Waze got a big boost up to reach 30 million registered users. But Inrix already has 100 million users every day, and powers maps for Garmin, MapQuest, Ford, and BMW.
Where’s all this data coming from? Actually, where did Inrix come from? The startup spun out of Microsoft’s automotive research lab in 2004. Since then it’s signed deal after deal to sell traffic data to practically anyone…so long as they collect that same data and send it back to Inrix.
This crowdsourced model keeps on snowballing. Now Inrix has data on 1.8 million miles of road in 35 countries. Six of the top eight automakers with built-in navigation systems and eight of the top twelve iOS map apps rely on Inrix. Beyond developers and car manufacturers, it sells data to governments, TV and radio stations for on-air traffic reports, commercial fleets like UPS, and traffic websites. It has its own navigation app, plus a clever partnership with mobile carriers that lets it use data about when phones switch from tower to tower to calculate traffic.
All these sources helped it determine which cities would have the worst Thanksgiving delays on the road. Sure, everyone loves to laugh at the terrible traffic in Los Angeles, but Silicon Valley better hold its tongue. Inrix’s data predicted that after LA, San Francisco would have the second longest delays, followed by New York, Chicago, and DC. On Black Friday, traffic at all 10 of the top US malls was up from last year. #1 Mall Of America in Minnesota saw congestion up 29.6% while traffic increased a staggering 57.1% at #7 shopping center The Woodfield Mall in Illinois.
Since Inrix’s data gets white-labeled so often, it has to start getting its name out there of it wants to make a splash on the public market. In April CEO Bryan Mistle told Bloomberg that Inrix was planning an IPO where it would seek to raise $75 million to $100 million by selling 10% to 15% of its shares. That could value the company at $1 billion. Then last month the Wall Street Journal reported that Inrix had hired Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as underwriters for the IPO.
I spoke with Mistle and he refused to comment on the IPO, but my sources say it’s still on track for 2013. He’s the right guy to lead the company. Mistle grew up in Detroit and previously worked at Ford and General Motors. He’s passionate about solving traffic which wastes 2 billion gallons of gas a year in America alone as is a serious a serious environmental issue. “There’s few companies in the world having as big an impact on one of the world’s biggest problems as we are.”
That’s because even if just a small number of vehicles learn about and avoid a traffic jam, it can alleviate the clog. Mistle tells me”It’s a geometric graph [similar to an exponential graph], not a linear graph. If you have a 5% impact on traffic congestion you could almost solve traffic problems [altogether].”
Providing accurate traffic data is a huge challenge, though. Mistle explains:
“Apple found out that it’s a lot harder than you think. Just because you have GPS data doesn’t mean you understand traffic. It’s not just enough to get speed data. There are vehicles on the side of the road and you don’t want to show that traffic has stopped. In a snow storm you don’t want to say traffic is free-flowing [just because there are no cars on the road]. Someone could be riding a bike rather than in a car. There’s a lot of analytics and algorithms that go into creating high-quality maps and traffic data. That’s why Inrix has over 100 patents.”
If Inrix can make the world realize just how critical its data is, it could raise plenty of money to augment its $68.1 million in venture funding and fend off competitors TomTom and Nokia’s NavTeq. A full war chest would allow it to accelerate its pursuit of what Mistle tells me are Inrix’ three big goals: getting onto as many devices as possible, geographic expansion from 35 to a total of 50 new countries in 2013, and investment beyond data in analytics and applications. Then maybe people will realize it’s Inrix that got them home safe.
**EXPAND THIS BOX FOR MORE INFO** Liam reviews the brand new white 32gb iPad 2, including the new iPad case which is designed for it. He talks about the weight, new features, the camera, price, speed and overall what he thinks. Also there is a comparison between the original iPad and the new iPad 2 and the overall view on them both. FaceTime is also a new item on the iPad 2 and Liam demonstrates how easy it so facetime someone; he uses his iPod Touch fourth generation and calls the new iPad 2. Hope you enjoy! LINKS Tweet us on twitter Suzie: twitter.com Katie: twitter.com Facebook Katie: katiebelmont Suzie: suziekennett Check out our other videos here: www.youtube.com No copyright intended!!!! Video Rating: 3 / 5
According to FOSS Patents Florian Mueller, Apple has requested the California court where its second lawsuit against Samsung is filed, to include six additional Samsung products in its list of claims. The motion to add these devices was filed Friday evening, and follows Samsung's similar request to add the iPad mini, iPad 4 and the iPod touch 5 to its list of claims.
Here are the six additional Samsung products, which Apple claims infringes on its patents:
Samsung Galaxy S III running the new Android Jelly Bean OS
A few of these products were already in the initial list of infringing devices, but have been updated to newer Android versions since the first filing (specified above). Which factors into Apple’s tactic to include these devices with these versions of Android as part of the suit. From Mueller's post:
Apple’s motion highlights that all of these products (or product upgrades) were released after the fifth-generation iPod touch Samsung would like to include in this lawsuit, a fact that should make it difficult for the court to allow Samsung the addition of the fifth-generation iPod touch (apparently already released in early October) while denying Apple’s latest proposed additions as untimely.
Mueller notes that the case is scheduled to go on trial in March 2014, a time by which most of these products and their operating system versions would be outdated. So there's no risk of products from either of these companies getting banned in the near future-at least due to this lawsuit. However, by adding products to the list of claims, both companies hope to increase their damage redressal figures.
Well-known online education portal Khan Academy has updated its iOS app to include support for the iPhone and iPod touch in addition to the iPad, making it compatible with the entire iOS product lineup.
The app brings Khan Academy's expansive educational video content, which spans across various disciplines like Math, Science, Finance and History, to iOS.
In the app's transition to the iPhone, however, Khan Academy dropped some features that the iPad version of the app has, like the ability to login with an account to track progress, download videos for offline viewing and viewing subtitles along with a video. The access to a library of 3,500 videos is impressive, nonetheless, and is something that students with iPhones and iPods will surely appreciate.
Khan Academy was started in 2006 by Salman Khan with a mission to provide quality education to the masses for free. The non-profit is backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Google and a several other influential personalities and organisations.
You can download the app for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5.1 or higher from this link.
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If Research In Motion’s predicament is as dire as many have made it out to be, you wouldn’t know it from looking at the company’s stock.
Friday morning, investors emerged from their turkey-induced L-Tryptophan stupor to push RIM’s stock into a remarkable rally. The company’s shares, which have tumbled more than 20 percent this year, rose some 15 percent to $11.82 in early trading. The reason? Investor reaction to a bullish note from National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson, who raised his target on RIM to $15 from $12, citing the “positive sentiment” building ahead of the launch of the company’s next generation OS, BlackBerry 10.
“We think there is more money to be made ahead of the C2013 launch of BB10,” Thompson wrote in a research note to clients. “The new RIM management team is executing by maintaining the BlackBerry subscriber base, managing costs and cash, seemingly readying a February 2013 BB10 global platform launch.”
Thompson’s optimism echoes that of Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who earlier this week upgraded RIM to “Hold” from “Underperform,” noting developing carrier support for BlackBerry 10. “Preliminary results from our quarterly handset survey indicate developed market carriers have a much more positive view of BB10 than we expected,” he wrote in a note. “With greater carrier shelf space and marketing support, we now believe BB10 has a 20 percent – 30 percent probability of success.”
Two such votes of confidence, tentative though the second may be, seem to be dampening Wall Street’s skepticism over a RIM turnaround. The company’s shares have enjoyed a few days of consecutive gains now, and while they’re still nowhere near the $148 price they commanded in 2008, they’re at least headed in the right direction.
In what has become an annual holiday tradition, those who keep track of these things have started in on touting just how digital the holiday shopper has become, whipping out all manner of buzzwords to do so.
Last year, it was Cyber Monday — this year, it’s turned out to be Mobile Thursday. What’s next? Social Network Saturday? Self-Driving Car Sunday? (We still have Black Friday, by the way, which is today.)
And, indeed, the Mobile Thursday phrase got some big laps around the track, with numerous online shopping surveys — coming out faster than you can buy that new tablet — using it in their flash reports yesterday and today.
This year’s anecdotal meme: Apple iPads go well with pumpkin pie.
What isn’t said so much is that it is still a very small number — though fast-growing — over the last few years, with overall sales reaching $500 million for Thursday, compared to about $1.2 billion on Monday, according to comScore.
Still, for now, no one seems to break out actual mobile sales figures, which are clearly still a fraction of the totals. But they are more than happy to tell you that people are certainly browsing on their mobile devices, which should come as a surprise to exactly no one who is tired of talking to the relatives about three hours into the day.
According to IBM’s Benchmark report, for example, online sales were up 17.4 percent over 2011 on Thanksgiving Day, noting that “big winners were retailers who connected customers with personalized deals across multiple screens including PCs, smartphones and tablets.”
Some stats from IBM about Thursday:
Mobile Traffic: The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached 25.3 percent, up from 66.2 percent over 2011.
Mobile Shopping: The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase increased to 18.3 percent, up 65.3 percent from 2011.
Mobile Email: Smartphone and tablet shoppers responded to email deals from retailers, with emails opened on mobile devices jumping 23 percent on Thanksgiving Day over 2011.
Couch Commerce: In the evening hours, consumers shifted from shopping through their smartphones at the dinner table to buying through their iPad on the couch. At the end of the day the iPad drove more retail traffic than any other device with traffic reaching 10.7 percent versus the iPhone at 9.1 percent and Android at 5.8 percent.
Social Shopping: Shoppers referred from Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter increased in evening hours generating .63 percent of all online sales on Thanksgiving.
And today, Black Friday, IBM slightly upped those figures, noting that the iPhone was the preferred device to bring into a store to shop with — presumably irritating sales clerks everywhere.
Over at Fab, CEO Jason Goldberg was touting in a Betashop blog post that his mobile app sales were 40 percent of the retail site’s total for the day. It’s usually 33 percent, so it’s a small jump, which Goldberg attributed to a tweet by Apple promoting it. But how much did he sell? He’s not saying.
And eBay said it launched 20 mobile-only e-commerce promotions over its app, as did many other retailers.
Also, no surprise, the New York Times weighed in with the classic trend piece: “The Shrewd Shopper Carries a Smartphone.” Um, everyone carries a smartphone now, but it apparently gets more magical when you take it to Macy’s.
We’ll see if Mobile Thursday becomes Mobile Holiday Season, which would be a big deal — but it’s winning so far in the pundit stakes.
Until we get actual numbers, here’s a chart about the whole thing from eBay:
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The X-47B drone shown this file photo is one of the technologies under development that could lead to a fully autonomous weapon, Human Rights Watch said.
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Within the next 20 to 30 years, a fully autonomous weapon deployed on the battlefield could confuse a young girl with an ice cream cone for a soldier with a gun and kill her. Governments should stop this from happening before it is too late, a human rights advocacy urges in a new report.
So called killer robots do not yet exist, Human Rights Watch said. But the technology is headed in that direction. While autonomous weapons could lower human causalities on the battlefield, they would lack human compassion and make going to war easier, the group noted.
In addition, when a robot errs on the battlefield, where does the blame lie? The answer is fuzzy, according to Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield in England and contributor to the report.
"It could be the commander who sent it off. It could be the manufacturer. It could be the programmer who programmed the mission. The robot could take a bullet in its computer and go berserk. So there is no way of really determining who is accountable and that's very important for the laws of war," he said in the video below about the report released by Human Rights Watch.
How close are we to these machines? The group points to several precursor technologies in development, including the Navy's X-47B, a drone strike fighter designed to autonomously refuel and land on an aircraft carrier.
The drone is also designed to carry weapons and if it can eventually fly by itself, it could identify targets and launch its weapons without any human involvement, noted Bonnie Docherty, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.
The group is calling for an international treaty that would "prohibit the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons" as well as laws to prevent their development and deployment within individual nations.
"It is essential to stop the development of killer robots before they show up in national arsenals," Goose said in a news release. "As countries become more invested in this technology, it will become harder to persuade them to give it up."
- via The Verge
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.
A student uses a robotic surgery simulator at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. It turns out, gamers have a knack for robotic surgery too.
Good news, gamers. All those hours of playing video games really can pay off ... especially if you have hopes of being a surgeon. Or at least the kind of surgeon who uses robotic tools to help patients.
Just ask Dr. Sami Kilic, an associate professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) who specializes in robotic surgery. While attending a medical convention, he watched his 10-year-old son - an avid video game player - try his hand at a robotic surgery simulator. What Kilic saw surprised him.
His son had no training with this robot used to educate doctors about some of the latest high-tech medical procedures and yet, "he was immediately at ease with the technology and the type of movements required to operate the robot," Kilic says.
UTMB
Dr. Sami Kilic is the lead author of the study and associate professor and director of minimally invasive gynecology in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UTMB.
And that gave Kilic - the director of minimally invasive gynecology at UTMB - an idea. He would conduct a study to see if video games did, in fact, help provide the skills surgeons need to operate the robots that are becoming increasingly popular in the operating room.
The study compared how three different groups performed during a set of robotic surgery simulations - high school sophomores who play two hours of video games a day, college-age students who play four hours of video games a day and resident physicians who don't play video games.
The robotic surgery simulator is a training tool that looks a lot like an arcade booth complete with two hand-operated controllers and a monitor that displays real-time surgical movements. Kilic ran these three groups through delicate surgical tasks such as suturing, passing a needle and lifting surgical instruments with two robotic arms. The simulator tested the subject's economy of motion, how precise their hand-eye coordination was and how steady their grasping skills were, checking to see if the instruments collided or were dropped among, other things.
The result: Both the high school and college students matched, and in some cases exceeded, the skills of the resident physicians. This was especially surprising, Kilic told me in an email interview, because "my residents already had been operating actively. I was thinking their surgical background would surpass the non-medical-field people."
Instead, it seems hours spent with a game controller in hand does provide some of the skills needed to perform some of the most advanced robotic surgeries today.
"Video games seem to improve the motor skills and hand and eye coordination, which translates as reduced adaptation time and response time," Kilic explains.
Another interesting finding: It was the high schoolers who performed the best of the three groups. (The mean age of each group was 16 for the high schoolers, 21 for the college students and 31 for the residents).
Kilic notes that group only played two-hours of video games a day, compared to the college students who played four hours of video games a day. So more gaming does not necessarily mean more robotic surgery skills. In fact, just how much gaming time is most helpful is something Kilic plans to study down the road.
Dr. Sami Kilic talks about the robotic surgery simulator and how video games can help future surgeons.
And, of course, video games can only take a would-be surgeon so far. Kilic ran the three groups through a non-robot-assisted laparoscopy surgery simulator, and found that the resident physicians did much better than the other two groups.
"I think the residents' surgical background kicked in this part of the experiment," he says. "This tells me that classic teaching helps better for classical surgeries. But when you implement new technology to the medical field you need to have slightly different mindset to excel at it."
And that's the biggest take-away from this experiment, says Kilic: "We should find a better way of teaching the future of surgery to the futures surgeons," he says.
"Most physicians in practice today never learned robotic surgery in medical school," Kilic says. "However, as we see students with enhanced visual-spatial experience and hand-eye coordination that are a result of the technologically-savvy world they are immersed in, we should rethink how best to teach this generation."
Winda Benedetti writesabout video games for NBC News. You can follow her tweets about games and other things on Twitter here @WindaBenedetti and you canfollow her on Google+. Meanwhile, be sure to check out the IN-GAME FACEBOOK PAGE to discuss the day's gaming news and reviews.
Have one of those new bargain-priced Chrome OS laptops convinced you that it’s time to take a chance on Google’s browser-based OS? If so, then you’ll be happy to know that those HDMI ports will come in handy. In the most recent update to Chrome OS, Google has delivered dual monitor support so that you can mirror or extend your Chromebook’s display.
At first glance, it might not seem like there’s a real need for a secondary display on an inexpensive system built for browsing. After all, it doesn’t offer the same kind of muscle even a low-end Intel Core i3 processor achieves. But even on the first-gen Chromebooks, it’s still nice to know that you can now look at two tabs simultaneously — provided, of course, that you can find the requisite cable (not so easy with the original Samsung Series 5 ).
Once you’re hooked up, you’re free to drop the Chrome OS media player on one screen while you browse for Black Friday deals on the other… or play your favorite browser-based games while keeping a Gmail or Facebook window open nearby so that you can see when your friends are trying to get in touch with you.
For business users, this also means that you can actually use a Chromebook to run a presentation now. Fire up an app like SlideShare and turn mirroring on, hook up your projector, and you’re good to go.
At the end of the day, Chrome OS is still basically a bootable web browser. But with each passing update, Google’s getting closer and closer to a lightweight OS that offers users nearly the same functionality as Windows or OS X — as long as you can find web apps (or Native Client apps) that compare favorably with your current desktop standards.
Piracy on the Nintendo DS was a relatively easy and cheap affair. All you needed was access to an R4 cartridge and a few torrents, and you could amass hundreds of games for less than the cost of one. Nintendo was understandably not happy with the situation and decided to take legal action as well as updating its hardware in a bid to curb the piracy.
Version 1.4 of the DSi firmware rendered flash cards unusable back in 2009, then the R4 carts were made illegal in the UK in 2010, and with the launch of the 3DS Nintendo included auto-patching to try and stop piracy before it started, but it didn’t work.
Even with the updates and legal action, the R4 cart lives on, but Nintendo has now scored a major victory by helping to get them banned completely in the company’s home territory of Japan.
It’s actually the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that has imposed a ban on importing the cartridges, but Nintendo is behind the push to make this happen. The carts were already banned from sale in Japan, but not import, meaning they could still flood the market just not through official retail channels. Now they are completely blocked.
This may be good news for Nintendo and the continued sales of both official DS and 3DS titles, but the R4 carts did have another purpose: homebrew game development. They allowed unofficial games created for Nintendo devices to be tested on actual hardware. With this total ban, that also becomes a lot harder to do.
Windows 8 has been available as a torrent since August when the RTM copy leaked on to the web. It wasn’t pre-activated, so even though it’s a full copy of the Windows 8 build shipping today, usage is time limited without a workaround be used.
So far, an easy way to activate pirate copies of Windows 8 permanently has not appeared. The best solution to date has been to use a Key Management Services (KMS) server to allow 180 days of use. Anyone doing this has to reactivate once that time has passed, though.
However, Microsoft has inadvertently offered pirates a free pass and a way to convert their pirate copy of the OS to a legal version of Windows 8.
You may remember that Microsoft is offering the Windows 8 Media Center Pack for free until January to Windows 8 Pro owners. It turns out you can install the pirate copy of Windows 8, temporarily activate it using the KMS server method mentioned above, and then download and install the free Media Center Pack. A side effect of going through that process is the Media Center key fully activates your installation, turning the illegal OS into a legal one with no money spent.
It’s unclear whether Microsoft will be able to fix this issue, which I’m sure many pirates are now using to become legal for free. It would probably involve tweaking the Media Center activation to somehow remain separate from the core Windows 8 activation, which doesn’t sound like an easy thing to do. It’s also unlikely Microsoft will be able to reverse any activations carried out using this method unless they can somehow figure out which activation keys were linked to a previously illegal copy of the OS.
In Britain, the end of an era was cast into the history books this week. The multinational company Brother ceremoniously retired the production line of its old-school typewriters, which had been a staple of the factory for nearly 30 years. The final unit to makes its way down the line was instantly sent off to the place it belongs — a museum. It will go on display at the Science Museum in London, to be exact.
Brother had been the last manufacturer with a typewriter plant in the UK. However, the company does still produce the devices at a facility in the Far East. And believe it or not, Brother said it still does a reasonable amount of typewriter sales in the US, particularly to government offices which, as everyone knows, still like to function about 50 years in the past.
The specific unit that rolled out of the UK plant is a model that Brother has been making since 1985, but sales of typewriters in the UK date back more than 100 years. The very first mass produced typewriters hit the market in the 1870s in the US. Of course, technology changes and this is a symbolic representation of that fact.
The UK Brother facility will remain intact, although likely with a smaller staff. It will transition to produce other Brother products like high-capacity printers. Ironically, those are also on their way to becoming obsolete.
Although the company’s focus on printers, fax machines, and label makers doesn’t sound like good business, it has managed to remain pretty stable. In its most recent fiscal year, it had more than $300 million in sales.
