Business, Financial & Legal - Page 244

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 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.