Business, Financial & Legal - Page 131

Dan Porter, the former CEO of OMGPOP before it was bought out by Zynga for a rumored $210 million, is leaving Zynga, the company has announced today. Zynga is currently in the process of building Draw Something 2 and Zynga's COO David Ko has acknowledged Porter worked on the sequel.

Porter is just the latest in what seems to be a never ending stream of employees leaving Zynga after it went public in 2011. Zynga has appointed VP Sean Kelly to take over as head of the New York office. Kelly has been with the company since 2009.

Google's privacy director has announced internally that she is stepping down from her post with intentions to retire. Alma Whitten became Google's first director of privacy in 2010 after being an engineer with the company. Her job was to oversee future products and prevent the release of products that invaded privacy too much.

Whitten will remain with the privacy team for a few more months as Lawrence You transitions to her position. You is based in Mountain View, California and has been a Google engineer for eight years.

Google said in a statement:

eBay started off as something small, but has grown into something incredibly powerful and profitable. So much so that the Internet auction site is estimated that their total volume of merchandise sold will reach $110 billion by 2015.

The Internet auction site also sees a very large portion of their growth from developing markets, which will see a nice injection of both consumers and profits in the coming years. Bloomberg have noted that they estimate eBay to pull in between $21.5 billion and $23.5 billion in the year 2015 with their current business model.

eBay's continued success is thanks to current CEO John Donahue, who pushed for new features like mobile applications and local shopping tools. These goals have seen eBay's shares surge 75% since he took over from Meg Whitman in 2008. Just last year, eBay's sales grew 21%.

Bitcoins have slowly but surely been plowing their way into the market, where they represent a billion dollar market. Bitcoins are an open source, unregulated peer-to-peer currency, with around 10.9 million bitcoins in circulation on a single marketplace.

Bitcoins, at the moment, have a value of around $90, with the 10.9 million of them creating the billion dollar market. Bitcoins have stayed mostly away from the media's attention, but with the digital currency continuing to grow at breakneck speeds, I'm sure we're going to see some intervention soon enough. This rings especially true as bitcoins are used regularly as the currency of choice for the black market, assassins and drug dealers.

The digital currency does have a big upside, in the way that governments in economic troubles freeze citizens' bank accounts - bitcoins are safe from that. They're also easy to transfer between people without requiring citizens' personal information. There are of course downsides, with the growth of the digital currency possibly creating a bubble which will eventually pop, with people losing hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Google have begun their pilot scheme for a same-day delivery service in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it will potentially open up to other areas in the near future.

The Mountain View-based search giant are offering testers a six-month period of deliveries from retailers in the area, free to the consumer, with all of the shopping taking place in a single online store. Testers of the same-day delivery service will be able to select from a number of local stores, including the big ones like Target, Staples and more.

The deliveries are then dispatched for a specific time, based upon the consumers' delivery instructions. Google are still reportedly working on a pricing scheme, but this could cost below $70 per year in order to compete with Amazon Prime.

Businessweek have a very interesting piece on Samsung, which goes right into the heart and soul of the South Korean company. We know Samsung are willing to try anything and everything when it comes to smartphone form factors, where we see anything from smaller displays (under 4-inch) right up to the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II.

But on the flip side, it's not just about offering a multitude of devices, it's about knowing when and how to play them out. It was only a couple of years ago that Android didn't exist, and now we have around one billion Android-based devices in the wild.

One of the parts of Businessweek's article is quite interesting, in that they state that Samsung executives are paranoid - but not in a bad way. Being paranoid means you never stop, like other companies I won't mention, and you continue to innovate in the hopes of keeping your existing customer base, and securing more.

Finally a patent judge making some sense. A federal judge has ruled that mathematical algorithms can not be patented, meaning that the lawsuit against Rackspace is no longer valid. Uniloc USA sued Rackspace saying that the processing of floating point numbers via the Linux operating system violated their patent.

Chief Judge Leonard Davis cited a ruling by the US Supreme Court in which they determined that mathematical algorithms cannot be patented.

Rob Tiller, Red Hat's Assistant General Counsel for IP:

BlackBerry has returned to profit after being in the red last year. This morning BlackBerry released its first quarter financial report and there is some good news for investors - Blackberry is in the black again.

The report shows that the company managed to make a profit of $94 million, despite the fact that the BlackBerry 10 not being available in the US during the first quarter. The $94 million of GAAP income stemmed from a revenue of $2.7 billion.

That is a stark contrast to $125 million net loss the company saw in the same quarter of 2012. BlackBerry says that it has sold one million BlackBerry 10 devices and managed to push out five million of its older phones. 370,000 PlayBook tablets were also shipped during the first quarter. We will have to wait until the second quarter reports are released before we find out how well the BlackBerry Z10 is doing in the US, but so far this points a much better picture for BlackBerry.

Australian retailers already charge an arm and a leg over their overseas counterparts, but now one particular retailer is stepping over a very expensive line. A retailer in Brisbane is battling to keep customers in their store, so now they're charging people to for "just looking."

We're not even kidding here, as the retailer has thrown up a notice on their door, stating:

I worked in an IT retailer for ten years, and I do somewhat agree there are a lot of people who will come in and take a look around because you are a more expensive store who likes to give their customers better customer support. Having expensive technologies on display (such as monitors, cases, etc) where cheaper stores do not. Customers will walk in, take a look around, and leave - walking directly to the store down the road to buy the item they couldn't look at in their shop.

It looks like our private lives are set to not be as private as we think, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation looking at a future of monitoring online chats in real-time by as early as 2014.

FBI general counsel, Andrew Weissman, talked about the Justice Department's power to put pressure on cyber criminals during an address last week at the National Press Club in Washington. During his speech, he talked about what the FBI would like before the year ends: they want the ability to listen in on conversations that occur all over the Internet by gaining access to up-to-the-second feeds on what users would consider their secret chats.

Telecommunications within the US can be bugged with court approvals, something that has been in place since the 1994's Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, took place. Weissman added that with technology advancements coming thick and fast, the FBI has been behind the ball in tracking down criminals who have moved operations off of the streets and onto the Internet. He adds:

Yahoo are on a continued mission to revamp their digital news and media business, with their latest acquisition of Summly, a startup that specializes in summarizing web content into a format made easier to consume media on a mobile device.

AllThingsD reports that the transaction saw Yahoo shifting $30 million to acquire the startup, 90% of it in cash with the remaining 10% in stock. The news gets better; with the iPhone app first designed by London-based Nick D'Aloisio, who was just fifteen years old when he created Summly.

What exactly does Summly do? Well, it allows you to choose your news sources from a bunch of pre-packages categories, or from your favorite websites. From there, it will let you enter keywords for topics that might be of interest too. Summly will also show you the latest stories that it has summarized in up to 400 characters, presented with a beautifully clean interface.

Last week FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell announced that he would be stepping down from his seat at the FCC. McDowell was one of the biggest opponents to the Net Neutrality rules that were adopted by the FCC in 2010.

In 2010 the FCC approved net neutrality rules that prevented Internet service providers from blocking lawful traffic and banning discrimination against competitive services running over the ISP's networks. This was seen as a major win for internet lovers across the nation.

The controversy came when Wireless carriers were deemed to not be subject to those rules. McDowell opposed the net neutrality rules stating "I just think it was needlessly disruptive and a diversion of FCC resources." When asked to elaborate, McDowell had the following to say:

There are thousands of people, myself included, saddened by the news that Google are shutting down Reader in a couple of months. Why did they do it? News is now coming out that the Mountain View-based company closed Reader due to the hidden costs of keeping users' data private.

This is coming from an unnamed source of AllThingD, who said that the closure of Reader is at least partly due to Google's reluctance to build out the staff and infrastructure needed to deal with the legal and privacy issues related to Reader. The source added that Google are trying to position themselves so that they stop getting into expensive lawsuits, by adding dedicated staff to deal with legal issues to each of their teams.

When Google announced the closure of Reader, they didn't even have a project manager of full-time engineer dedicated to it. Google reportedly didn't want to spend the money building the service into a full-blown app, and on the flip side, didn't want to sell it to a third-party because of its deep integration with other Google Apps.

Apple have reached 100% renewable energy usage at all of their data centers, with their corporate facilities not far behind with 75% renewable energy. Considering the company was at just 35% renewable energy for their corporate facilities two years ago, this is a swift, and great change:

Apple made a commitment in May of last year after criticism hit then from Greenpeace over their energy usage, and while Greenpeace's ratings are based on erroneous calculations and assumptions, Apple still took the initiative to push forward and make more public statements about their energy usage and plans.

The Cupertino-based iPhone giant have estimated that their carbon footprint for last year included 30.9 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, with 98% of that total directly related to the life cycles of their products. The total represents a 34% increase over their 2011 estimates, but the company has noted that recent increases have been driven mainly by growth in sales, with emissions per dollar of revenue decreasing 21.5% from 2008 to 2012.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have put up a $100,000 of initial funding for someone who designs the "next generation of condoms." The money won't stop there, as the funding will expand up to $1 million for whoever is capable of delivering the next-gen contraception.

Considering that the basic form of contraception hasn't received many changes over the years, it is used by an estimated 750 million people across the world for both reducing unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually-transmitted infections. The Foundation's description of the challenge explains it as: "The primary drawback from the male perspective is that condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom."

A next-gen condom might give men more sensation, pushing them to use them more often, for the good of global health. When it comes to female condoms, "suffer from some of the same liabilities as male condoms, require proper insertion training and are substantially more expensive than their male counterparts."

While addressing the House of Representatives committee on IT pricing today, Adobe Australia and New Zealand managing director, Paul Robson, was questioned about the higher prices in Australia for their Creative Suite 6 software.

Considering Adobe charge Australians a not so down under 167% more, the question is a very big one to answer. Australians are paying $3175 compared to their US friends paying just $1899 for CS6. Robson said that consumers in Australia were paying the extra costs because they were automatically redirected to Adobe's Australian website, giving them the ability to access local discounts and community groups.

Robson didn't explain exactly why Australians pay more for Adobe software, saying that Adobe's use of Australian-only pricing or "geoblocking" was a "well established and legal process".

Samsung may be getting ready to launch their Galaxy S4, but this doesn't stop them from working on a thousand and one other devices, especially in the very lucrative emerging markets.Samsung may be getting ready to launch their Galaxy S4, but this doesn't stop them from working on a thousand and one other devices, especially in the very lucrative emerging markets.

Samsung have plenty of devices in the low- to mid-range market, such as the Galaxy S3 Mini, but they're also wanting to hit the super low-end emerging markets, such as India and Indonesia. These markets are pretty much controlled by feature phones, with Samsung clawing considerable amounts of the market share with devices in the sub-$100 market.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the South Korean electronics giant has seen their market share in Indonesia rise from just 2% in 2010, to a market-dominating 50% in the last quarter.

J.D. Power and Associates' new study shows that Apple leads the pack when it comes to consumer satisfaction. This is the ninth time in a row that Apple has topped J.D. Power's survey, though not everything remains the same. Second place is in fierce contention by four different manufacturers.

Apple is the only company to be above the study average, coming in with a score of 855. Just one point behind the study average, Nokia comes in at a satisfaction rating of 795. Samsung pulls a close third with a score of 793. Just behind Samsung is Motorola with a score of 792. HTC brings up the rear with a score of 790.

Once you move down the list, the scores drop off. LG received a score of 744 and BlackBerry only scored 732. Interestingly enough, about 17 percent of those surveyed said that they encountered some sort of bug or glitch. Bugs and glitches really detract from the user experience and companies should probably focus heavily in these areas.

Going green is the big push right now and has been for the past several years. Apple releases its "Apple and the Environment" report to show just how Apple's business affects the environment around us. The latest report shows that while Apple is moving towards green energy use, its overall production of CO2 is still increasing.

Apple has started to brag that its data centers are 100 percent powered by renewable energy sources. Even with this change, Apple's overall production has increased by 34 percent. Apple attributes this increase to its overall increase in products sold. It's true that Apple produces less CO2 per dollar revenue.

Since 2008, Apple has reduced its emissions per dollar revenue by 21.5 percent. Apple has also increased renewable energy at its corporate facilities by 114 percent. However, facilities only contribute 2 percent of Apple's emissions. 61 percent, or the large majority, come from the manufacturing of the devices.

HTC CEO Peter Chou is so committed to the success of the HTC One that he has reportedly said that he will quit his job and leave HTC if the upcoming One smartphone is a flop.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chou said that in the event that the HTC One is a failure, he will resign his position at the company. At the moment, things are not looking good for Chou as HTC's flagship release has been delayed until the end of this month due to delays.

The delays were first thought to be caused by HTC's new "Ultra Pixel" camera technology, or its aluminum uni-frame body, but we recently discovered that is not the case. In fact, HTC is having issues getting many of its components due to being downgraded from a tier one manufacturer.