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Start Spreading the News: Yahoo Gets New Times Square Office, Offers Free Terabyte on Flickr and Updates Design to Look Like 2013

Kara Swisher — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:10:46 +0000

At a media event in New York today, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced a new office in Times Square for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

“From one Mayor to another,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Mayer (get it?) about locating in Manhattan’s iconic location, which will house 500 Yahoo employees.

But not Tumblr, which will remain blissfully downtown, even after its $1.1 billion all-cash acquisition by Yahoo announced today.

“We’re very happy that Tumblr is a home-grown company,” said Bloomberg,

Irony alert: Yahoo’s new digs in the Big Apple is actually the old HQ of the New York Times.

“Twenty years ago there were a lot of Yahoos in New York,” said the Bloomberg, channeling Jackie Mason and then touting the local tech industry and reeling off the stats.

Boiled down: Geeks rule.

Mayer also talked briefly about the acquisition of Tumblr and repeated the trying-really-hard-to-be-wacky, “we’re going to try not to screw it up” promise.

Mayer then introduced another promise — a commitment to fix Yahoo’s last major acquisition screw-up, Flickr.

Yahoo exec Adam Cahan, who is in charge of the photo-sharing service and who uses the term “awesome” quite a lot, came on next to show the changes.

He introduced a new design, which looks kinda like Instagram and kinda like Flipboard and kinda like Apple and kinda like Facebook’s homepage. It does bring Yahoo up to speed with others in the key photo-sharing space, which is good.

(Sorry, I cannot be more detailed, since I could only see it via Internet, because AllThingsD.com was not invited to the event by Yahoo.)

From what I can tell, it’s very image-centric with big photos and little text.

Cahan also introed a new Google Android mobile version and said that Flickr will offer a terabyte of space for free to users, which is about 537,731 photos.

Then he talked about a terabyte a lot, claiming that “no other Internet company has offered you a terabyte” of space. (Well, I would imagine Google and Facebook will now do so in a New York minute.)

Some very nice man with a German accent demoed it. (Again, I am not there and did not see a name going by on screen, and I can’t ask Yahoo PR his name.)

It’s purty, for sure, and nice to be able to upload photos in their full fidelity without worrying about space constraints.

Mayer called it “spectacular,” “bigger” and, of course, “awesome.”

It is certainly much more striking than how the antiquated Flickr homepage used to look like — which was circa 1969. But, like I said, kinda like what others have already done, although these updates are certainly a welcome change for Flickr.

Mayer then ran a very cute video for the changes, which, well, was kinda like an Apple video.

“Flickr was awesome once and then it languished,” said Mayer, declaring victory already. “And now it’s awesome again.”

In a Q&A after, Mayer, Cahan and the nice German guy answered questions about integration of Tumblr and Flickr (not yet!); how it was like or not like Instagram (no cropping apparently — which is exactly what is fantastic about Instagram); the terabyte (it’s awesome!); and more Tumblr deets (you know them already); monetization; and a bizarre one about redundancy so you don’t lose photos.

Mayer also said that Yahoo had bought 11 billboards in Times Square to show off Flickr and noted there was a party after for the media. (Except the unchosen, so I am enjoying a nice glass of Cabernet all by my lonesome. Frankly, it’s awesome!)

(Photo credit: Kevin Tachman for Times Square Alliance.)

Lenovo’s Horizon PC Turns Your Coffee Table Into a Touchscreen Game Center

Lauren Goode — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:20 +0000

What kind of computer comes with an explicit warning not to rest your coffee cup on it?

A computer like Lenovo’s new IdeaCentre Horizon PC does -– and with good reason. This 27-inch computer transforms from a standard all-in-one into a giant touchscreen tabletop display.

When the Horizon is upright, it’s running Microsoft’s Windows 8. Slide down the kickstand in the back and lay the thing flat on your coffee table, and it automatically jumps to “Aura” mode, a Lenovo-created interface for playing games with friends and family.

I’ll admit that I was quick to poke fun at the Horizon when I first saw it at the International CES trade show earlier this year. I enjoyed giving the games a test drive at the time, but I was wondering if a computer this size could really have a place in my small Manhattan apartment. I don’t even have a coffee table.

[ See post to watch video ]

After using the Horizon on a dining table for the past week and a half, I’ve been able to fully assess it. I like it, mostly because having a second large display at home is great for media consumption. But I still wouldn’t buy it. At the end of the day, it’s a niche product.

And, it’s pricey: Lenovo is currently selling its top model, which has a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor and eight gigabytes of memory, for $1,849. A slightly less powerful model, with a Core i5 chip, costs $1,699.

On June 23, Best Buy will begin offering the Horizon for slightly less: $1,599 for the Core i7 configuration, and $1,499 for the i5 model with only 6GB of RAM.

That’s still more expensive than the Sony Vaio Tap 20, a hybrid PC/tablet that starts at $880. And Asus’s 18-inch Transformer AiO, a similarly-designed computer that runs both Windows 8 and Google Android operating systems, costs $1,300. So if you’re looking for a PC that can also be used like a large tablet, there are more reasonable options.

And if you just want a tablet for game playing and watching videos, well, you can spend $400 and get a pretty good one.

Lenovo says there are a few reasons why the Horizon is so expensive. First, and most obvious, is the size of the display. Then, there’s the preloaded game software — nine games total, including three from Ubisoft, one from EA and five developed by Lenovo. Some of those games require accessories, like e-dice, joysticks and strikers, which are thrown into the mix. Lastly, it comes with a one terabyte internal hard drive.

Let’s say you’re willing to splurge for all this, and the family-centric games are a big draw for you.

As I mentioned, it’s running on Windows 8, and if you’re not super familiar with Microsoft’s newest operating system, there will be a learning curve as you adjust to all of the new swipes and gestures, designed with touchscreens in mind.

I tested the Core i5 model. It measures 27.2 by 16.9 by 1.17 inches, and weighs 18 pounds. Lenovo envisions that users will want to move this computer around the house, but I lugged it from room to room just once, and “lug” is the appropriate description here. It’s definitely not portable. I am not, for example, going to bring it to a friend’s house, or travel with it on a plane to the D11 Conference next week, as I would a tablet.

On the left side of the Horizon is the power button. The right side is loaded with two USB ports, an HDMI port, a media card reader and jacks for headphones and the power cord.

The 27-inch diagonal display is a full-HD multitouch display. It’s nice but not particularly brilliant. Games looked fluid and bright, but when I watched a couple episodes of ABC’s “Scandal” on Netflix, colors were a little washed out.

On to gaming, the main event: The Horizon has a respectable Nvidia processor and 2GB of processing RAM, enough for all of your needs with this computer, but not the kind of power you’d expect with a hardcore gaming machine.

Preloaded game titles include Lenovo Air Hockey, Lenovo Tycoon (Lenovo’s version of Monopoly), Lenovo Fishing Joy, Lenovo Texas Hold ‘Em, and from other publishers, the original Monopoly and Ubisoft’s Raiding Company. It also comes with BlueStacks, an app interface that lets you play Google Android games.

I laid the PC flat on the table, prompting the Aura desktop overlay to appear, and “convinced” my boyfriend to geek out and play games with me. We played a few intense games of Air Hockey, sliding the strikers along the surface of the PC to score. He got hooked playing Lenovo Fishing Joy. Then we started games of both Lenovo Tycoon and the much-better Monopoly.

Rolling the e-dice was, at first, pretty cool. A set of virtual dice in the game would spin and stop moving when the physical dice did. As we took turns in Monopoly, the game zoomed in to show us different spots along the boardwalk, then zoomed back to the whole game board again when it was the next person’s turn to roll.

But I encountered a glitch with the e-dice: When I rolled the physical dice, the virtual dice on screen kept rolling … and rolling …

After a minute or two of excitable dice, we finally unplugged the Bluetooth dongle to disconnect the dice entirely, then started over again.

Overall, playing the games was fun, and I’m sure I could entertain my young niece and nephew for awhile with this. I’d like to see more brand-name games on the Horizon. On a few occasions I went back to the Windows 8 desktop — which appears when you stand the computer upright again — to load up Angry Birds. Lenovo says that more Horizon-optimized game titles are in the works.

When it comes to non-gaming activities on this machine, the touchscreen on a 27-inch display creates a unique dilemma: Sit close enough to touch it, and you’re really, really close to a giant screen. Sit further back to avoid eye strain, and you might not be close enough to comfortably use the touchscreen.

Fortunately, the Horizon also comes with a wireless mouse and keyboard, which I did end up using for email and productivity apps, allowing me to use tactile keys and sit further back from the screen.

Finally, battery life is less than that of the similar hybrids I mentioned earlier, but this is a bigger machine. In the first test I conducted, I bumped up the display to full brightness, played iTunes and had an email application running, and the battery lasted two hours and 22 minutes. During the second test, I streamed videos and played a couple games, and it lasted two hours and 10 minutes.

Now that I’ve tried the Horizon, I’d like a bigger display in my living room. But I wasn’t blown away by the game experience, and I wouldn’t want to pay $1,700 for it.

Mobile Gamers With Better Phone Screens Spend More on In-App Purchases

Eric Johnson — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:00:14 +0000

Mobile game developers looking to climb the “Top Grossing” charts, take heed: The better your players’ phone screens are, the more they’re likely to spend on in-app purchases.

At least that’s the conclusion of a new study run by mobile games studio Pocket Gems. The study compared different generations of iPhones, iPads and Android phones against how much their owners were buying within individual games’ stores. It found that higher-resolution screens correlated with more money spent in games for both phone operating systems, but not for the iPads.

“Android users with the highest resolution devices are nearly 10 times more likely to make in-app purchases than users with lower resolution devices,” Pocket Gems said in a press release. “For iPhones, the iPhone 5 monetizes nearly 4 times that of the older generation iPhone 3GS.”

Contrasting old and new iPads, however, showed no correlation between screens and monetization.

PocketGems CEO Ben Liu said screen resolution is “a good proxy” for a device’s processor power and memory, so it’s safe to assume that phones with better screens are offering a better user experience all around. However, he said, phones and tablets showed different results in the study because of differences in their upgrade cycles.

To wit: People who have the money to buy a new phone (which will probably have a better screen than their two-year-old device) as soon as it makes economic sense to do so are more likely to have disposable income to spend on virtual goods. However, Wi-Fi-only tablets not tied to a two-year data contract don’t encourage their users to refresh as quickly, so owners of the original iPad from 2010 seem to be buying nearly as much as their newer-iPad-owning counterparts.

(One interesting side note: The original iPad and the iPad mini, both of which lack a high-resolution Retina display, monetized better than the latest iPad, even though the latter has a much better screen).

So, why the huge gap between Android owners and iPhone owners? Liu said it’s because the Android OS spans all types of phones, from low-end to high-end, while Apple is more homogeneously situated in the high end (for now, at least).

The takeaway for game devs: If you have a choice when making games and, later, fixing problems, your time may be better spent on players with pricier devices.

PocketGems’ infographic showing the trends is below:

OpenX Raises $22.5 Million in Round Led by Samsung Venture Unit

Kara Swisher — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:00:22 +0000

OpenX Software said it had raised $22.5 million in a Series E funding round, with Samsung Venture Investment Corporation as lead investor.

All told, the Los Angeles-based online advertising technology company has raised $70 million. Along with Samsung, existing investors — Accel Partners, Index
Ventures, SAP Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, Inc. and Presidio Ventures — were also part of the new round.

“We have been building the company to continue to grow,” said OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan, who noted that the company had doubled its size and revenue in the last year. The company now has 260 employees.

He said that OpenX had a partnership with Samsung that it evolved into a financial arrangement to bring the Korean electronics giant “a little closer to the company.”

Cadogan said the new funding would be used for acquisitions and other expansion, especially into mobile, as it competes with rivals such as search giant Google.

“We are building a truly viable revenue program that goes across screens,” he said, pointing to two recent strategic acquisitions — LiftDNA and JumpTime.

Samsung’s Brannon Lacey said the company invested in OpenX because it was pioneering in the space. “As an investor, it is a fragmented market and there will be consolidation,” he said. “And OpenX is best positioned for that.”

OpenX said that it had grown its transactions from one trillion to four trillion from 2011 to 2012.

Former MySpace and NFL Digital Exec Jeff Berman Tapped as President of Hollywood's BermanBraun

Kara Swisher — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:55:18 +0000

Longtime digital exec Jeff Berman is joining Hollywood production company BermanBraun as its first president.

Berman — who is no relation to BermanBraun co-founder Gail Berman — comes to the firm from the National Football League where he has been in charge of its Web, mobile, social and non-console gaming efforts. While there, he worked on several new initiatives, such as its multi-party video chat for Fantasy Football.

Several years before that, he was a top exec at social networking site Myspace, finally ending up as president of sales and marketing, where he was in charge of branded advertising, sales operations, entertainment, content and marketing. Efforts there by Berman included the now defunct Web-only series “Quarterlife,” which also had a very short life on a major network.

The Yale Law School grad was also on the board of Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com last year.

He’s an interesting person, then, for BermanBraun, which focuses on content across multiple screens, including big branded Web sites such as Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN and also more traditional entertainment shows. Its juicy-looking television series “Deception,” for example, is set to appear on NBC this week. It now has about 130 employees, mostly working at its Santa Monica, Calif., HQ.

“We needed an exceptional leader to manage the company,” said BermanBraun co-founder Lloyd Braun, who was once a top media exec at Yahoo. “And Jeff is someone who has skillsets in a whole bunch of areas and an emotional intelligence that is as important to what we do.”

Braun said Berman would initially focus on his area of expertise — digital — but that he would become more involved in the television and movie arenas over time.

BermanBraun — which considered raising funding last year — is at an interesting juncture in its development, trying to form a new kind of independent Hollywood media company that straddles analog and digital.

Berman said he was attracted to the opportunity there.

“I had a great job, since there is nothing bigger than the NFL,” he said in an interview yesterday. “But Lloyd and Gail have an incredible vision across platforms for entertainment.”

He added that content was just at the beginning of development online, but was finally poised to explode with the popularity of tablets, smartphones, interactive TV and other such devices, as well as social and e-commerce tools.

“The mind reels, there is so much that has happened and can happen,” said Berman. “I don’t know if there is a better time to be at such a place to create these new franchises — [BermanBraun] is a laboratory, where stuff is actually working.”

Mobile Thursday? Smartphone Shopping Is Still Tiny, But It's This Year's Big Online Buzzword.

Kara Swisher — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 18:13:19 +0000

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:

Marissa Mayer Will "Talk About Where She Is Taking Yahoo" in First Media Interview Since Becoming CEO

Kara Swisher — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:59:21 +0000

Marissa Mayer — the typically press-loving Silicon Valley exec who has avoided much media interaction since she took over as CEO of Yahoo — will be doing her first sit-down interview at the end of the month at a Fortune magazine event.

In the chat, according to an invite for a November 27 Silicon Valley dinner for its Most Powerful Women franchise, “she plans to talk about where she is taking Yahoo and what excites her about the future of technology.”

Pull up your chairs, people!

Actually, Mayer has recently spoken most specifically about her plans for the long-troubled company, but it was more formally during Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings call, in which she outlined a mobile-heavy strategy and also a plan to make smaller acquisitions.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said then to Wall Street analysts, soon after which she bought a tiny mobile start-up called Stamped.

But Mayer has yet to sit down live with a journalist — she had agreed to appear for a sit-down stage interview at a recent TechCrunch Disrupt event, but she opted instead to be a demo judge, where the former Google exec said nothing about her new job at Yahoo.

Mayer will presumably be doing just that with Fortune editor-at-large Pattie Sellers, who helms the high-profile annual Most Powerful Women conference and also the magazine’s list that featured Mayer on the cover this year (see above). Sellers has also just written a profile of Mayer titled “Ready to Rumble at Yahoo,” which did not include her participation but did have quotes from one of her recent hires — Patricia Moll Kriese — at Yahoo.

But Sellers appears to be the only reporter that Mayer has spoken to on the record since she got the job, although her comments in one piece just after she got the job were mostly limited to the topic to her pregnancy. Sellers also announced the name of Mayer’s baby — Macallister — in another recent post.

Presumably, Mayer will talk about her new son with Sellers, but it will be interesting to see what she says about Yahoo, as well as on the future of technology. At an annual Churchill Club gadget event the techie did with Walt Mossberg and me in 2007, Mayer showed off a keyboard whose keys had embedded LCD screens, a wireless rabbit, an alarm clock that can jump off your nightstand and a T-shirt with a wireless signal locator in it.

Here is a video of her in full geek mode talking about that way back when:

Samsung Sells Three Million Galaxy Note II "Phablets" in Just Over a Month

Lauren Goode — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:41:56 +0000

Samsung is making note of early Galaxy Note II sales — and they’re surprisingly good.

The Korean electronics giant said earlier today that it has sold more than three million Galaxy Note II “phablets” since the device first went on sale overseas 37 days ago.

The Galaxy Note II is the company’s second-generation sandwich-sized smartphone, measuring six inches by three inches, with a 5.5-inch display.

It was first released in South Korea in September, and came to the U.S. market and other countries in October. It’s running on a new Google Android operating system, Jelly Bean 4.1 and, as I noted in my recent review, despite it’s sometimes-awkward size, it’s a well-made phone.

The first Galaxy Note, launched in the U.S. in February 2012, was greeted with some raised eyebrows due to its size (AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg called it “positively gargantuan”). Despite that, 10 million of those devices have sold worldwide.

Samsung’s Note II sales numbers still fall short of Apple’s first-weekend iPhone 5 sales numbers, which topped five million.

After Declaring It the Future of Yahoo, CEO Mayer Appoints IntoNow's Cahan to Mobile Kingpin (Internal Memo, Natch!)

Kara Swisher — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:03:06 +0000

Adam Cahan

A very important management shift at Yahoo got a bit lost in last week’s news of CEO Marissa Mayer’s first acquisition, a small mobile start-up called Stamped.

That would be the appointment of former IntoNow founder and CEO Adam Cahan to oversee all of Yahoo’s mobile efforts, as well as its Flickr photo sharing service.

According to an internal memo that Mayer sent out last week to employees, Cahan has been given the title of SVP of Emerging Products and Technology, with a spot on the exec staff, reporting directly to her.

Said the memo (in its entirety below):

“[Cahan] will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.”

Mayer’s promotion of the slick exec, who has been described by almost everyone I spoke to at Yahoo as smoothly political, is an interesting internal choice by Mayer. He only got to Yahoo recently, after IntoNow was bought by Yahoo for more than $20 million in the spring of last year.

IntoNow was a spinoff from the video advertising company Auditude, which was sold to Adobe for a reported $100 million.

The television indexing start-up had launched in early 2011 as an Apple iPhone app that recognized what was playing on the screen by analyzing the audio from satellite feeds and matching it to listings. The start-up had hoped to eventually license its technology as offer-measurement services for TV advertising and viewership.

As Liz Gannes noted in a post on AllThingsD:

“It’s similar to the Shazam mobile app that many people know and love, which IDs an ambient song by recording it and quickly matching it to an archive. IntoNow users can “check in” to a particular episode once it’s been recognized, like one would check into a restaurant on Foursquare. The goal is to enable conversations around the watercooler and on social networks by helping users connect around what they’re watching and discover new things to watch.”

Cool, although IntoNow’s technology was far more compelling than its consumer promise.

Now, Cahan will be charged with doing both of Yahoo in mobile — which is most likely to be accomplished via a series of small mobile acquisitions, presumably to be stitched together into a cohesive and successful whole.

At least that’s the idea.

Cahan is an experienced exec, having worked at a number of places before founding IntoNow, including MTV Networks, NBC, McKinsey, National Geographic Television and — wait for it — Google, in business operations.

(Being an ex-Googler, which Mayer is, seems to have its advantages at Yahoo these days, with Cahan as the latest example.)

He is most definitely a key hire, because Mayer spent a lot of time stressing how mobile was Yahoo’s No. 1 priority on its recent earnings call with investors.

“Yahoo will have to be a predominantly mobile company,” she said, noting a “focused, coherent” mobile strategy was the top initiative.

Mayer had to say that, of course, even if being a mobile giant is now mostly just wishful thinking at Yahoo, since most of the many efforts the company has made in the arena have been duds. Yahoo has also lost a lot of mobile engineering talent over the years, remaining largely a desktop offering, even as the area has increasingly become where consumers are getting their information.

A blog post by Cahan at Yahoo was widely quoted when the tiny Stamped — which is an online recommendations app — was bought for under $10 million last week by Yahoo.

In it, he noted:

“Most people are always within arm’s reach of their mobile phones. For many of us, it’s the first thing we look at in the morning and the last thing we check at night. Mobile is at the center of how we connect with people, consume information, and pass the time, and we’re focused on making Yahoo! the most inspiring and entertaining way to do just that.”

We’ll see if Yahoo can be a significant mobile player, as Mayer has promised Wall Street. But Cahan has certainly been busy since he got the job, sources said, beginning with the rejiggering of Yahoo’s mobile teams, as well as visiting the Flickr office this week.

Until it all sorts itself out, please enjoy this Oct. 25 internal memo on Cahan and the Stamped acquisition:

YAHOO! PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION — DO NOT FORWARD

Hi All –

As we discussed in our strategy all-hands earlier this month, innovation and talent are essential to delivering against our vision to inspire and delight our users as a part of their daily lives. Many of the areas that require special attention are emerging technologies and Yahoo! products where we’ve not yet reinvented, re-imagined and rebuilt in order to keep pace with changes in user behaviors and platform shifts.

To aid our efforts, I’m promoting Adam Cahan to lead this effort as Senior Vice President of Emerging Products and Technology. Adam will be a member of e-staff and report directly to me. He will oversee our mobile efforts, enabled screens (CTV+IntoNow), and Flickr. Adam will be responsible for building a world-class team focused on creating innovative products and experiences that inspire and delight our users worldwide.

And he’s already making great progress! Today, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve acquired a very talented mobile team, based in New York City.

Robby, Kevin, Bart, Paul and the entire team at Stamped are a natural fit for Yahoo!. Their experience building fun, useful, personalized mobile products aligns well with our vision to create the best everyday mobile experience for our users. The team will be a great asset for us as we expand Yahoo!’s mobile efforts and create another key center for mobile innovation in New York.

I’m excited that we’ve been able to move quickly and execute well in order to bring on such a talented team. Please join me in congratulating Adam in his promotion and welcoming Anthony, Bart, Geoff, Kevin, Landon, Michael, Paul, Robby and Travis to Yahoo!

Thanks,

Marissa

Kindle Fire, USB on the iPad, and Disk Defragmentation

Walt Mossberg — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:21:57 +0000

When the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD is used to read an ordinary eBook, does the book page look like the new Kindle Paperwhite, or ordinary Kindle gray?

Neither. Standard Kindle e-readers, even the improved new ones, use a technology called E Ink, that’s entirely different from the screen technology on the Kindle Fire series. The latter is an LCD screen, similar to what’s on an iPad or a laptop. I found reading a book on the Fire HD to be a good experience, but it’s different from that on a standard Kindle. For instance, like other LCD screens, the one on the Fire has much more glare than an E Ink screen, especially outdoors, even though Amazon claims the new HD has 25 percent less glare than its predecessor.

Does the iPad have a USB port? Can you attach a memory card reader to the iPad?

It has neither a built-in USB port nor a built-in memory card reader. But Apple sells a $29 accessory called the Camera Connection Kit that includes two adapters, one with a memory card reader and one with a USB port for connecting a camera via a cable. The catch is that these adapters only work with photos, not other types of files.

Is it possible to run disk defragmentation in Mac OSX (Mountain Lion) and if so, what is the best way to go about doing this?

Apple says its operating system does disk defragmentation—tidying up the arrangement of files for faster access—automatically, so doing so manually is unnecessary. I haven’t done it on my Macs for years. Still, some experts say it’s useful to do so, especially if your hard disk is almost full, or you’re noticing significant slowdowns. There are third-party defragmentation apps for the Mac. One, called iDefrag, can be found at http://bit.ly/M1ODBw. I haven’t tested it, so I don’t know how well it works.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

iPhone 5 Screen Production Begins at Sharp

John Paczkowski — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:12:50 +0000

Sharp has resolved the unspecified manufacturing issues that prevented it from shipping iPhone 5 displays on schedule earlier this summer. Sources close to the Japanese electronics maker say it began mass-producing liquid crystal display panels for the iPhone 5 this week. That’s encouraging news for Apple, which has implemented an aggressive global rollout plan for its latest smartphone.

Next iPhone Has Thinner Screen

Juro Osawa and Lorraine Luk — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 07:30:58 +0000

Apple Inc.’s next iPhone, currently being manufactured by Asian component makers, will use a new technology that makes the smartphone’s screen thinner, people familiar with the matter said, as the U.S. technology giant strives to improve technological features amid intensifying competition from Samsung Electronics Co. and other rivals.

Japanese liquid-crystal-display makers Sharp Corp. and Japan Display Inc. — a new company that combined three Japanese electronics makers’ display units — as well as South Korea’s LG Display Co. are currently mass producing panels for the next iPhone using so-called in-cell technology, the people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Launch Appears Near for Smaller Apple Tablet

Lorraine Luk — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:26:39 +0000

Apple Inc.’s component suppliers in Asia are preparing for mass production in September of a tablet computer with a smaller screen than the iPad, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting a launch for the device is near.

Two of the people said that the tablet’s screen will likely be smaller than eight inches. The iPad’s screen measures 9.7 inches, unchanged since the first model was released in 2010.

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Google Tablet Analysis Points to Thin Margins

Don Clark — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:00:06 +0000

It’s not surprising that the first tablet to carry Google’s brand would attract attention from hardware analysts. Nor is one of their key conclusions much of a shock — the $199 price tag on the new Nexus 7 doesn’t leave Google much of a profit margin.

The Nexus 7 tablet costs $199 handheld computer and features a 7-inch screen. The research firm UBM TechInsights has come up with a $184 preliminary estimate for the costs of components in the Google tablet. That compares with its $153 estimate in November for the components inside Amazon.com’s identically priced Kindle Fire.

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Apple Moves Toward Larger iPhone Screens

Lorraine Luk and Juro Osawa — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:30:06 +0000

Apple Inc., which is expected to launch its next-generation iPhone later this year, has ordered screens from its Asian suppliers that are bigger than the ones used in iPhones since they debuted in 2007, people familiar with the situation said.

Production is set to begin next month for the screens, which measure at least 4 inches diagonally compared with 3.5 inches on the iPhone 4S, the latest phone from Apple, the people said.

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Study: You Wish Your iPhone Display Were Bigger

John Paczkowski — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:45:08 +0000

“Bigger is better,” or so the adage goes. And according to consumers, it’s as applicable to smartphone displays as it is to diamonds and pre-IPO stakes in Facebook.

Research outfit Strategy Analytics recently surveyed smartphone owners in the U.S. and Britain and found that the vast majority of them preferred handsets with large screens. Offered a choice between their current smartphone and one with a bigger display, almost 90 percent of the consumers Strategy Analytics surveyed opted for the latter.

How much larger? The research outfit didn’t break out the percentage difference in announcing its findings, though it did say that consumers prefer smartphones with screens in the 4-inch to 4.5-inch range, provided they are also relatively light and thin.

Not the most surprising of findings, but certainly interesting. The display on Apple’s iPhone has been 3.5 inches since the device first debuted and, obviously, it continues to be wildly popular among consumers (though Apple is rumored to be building a 4-inch screen into the next iteration of the iPhone).

So the market has clearly embraced that screen size. But perhaps it is ready for something a bit larger — as long as you don’t look like you’re talking into a piece of toast when you use it.

Dell Goes on Ultrabook Diet With Slimmed-Down Laptop

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:03:02 +0000

As 2012 rolls on, consumers shopping for a PC will be seeing more of the thin, light, quick-starting Windows laptops called ultrabooks.

Big names like Lenovo and Toshiba already have entered this new category, and on Tuesday, Dell will introduce its first ultrabook, the XPS 13, starting at $999.

[ See post to watch video ]

Dell has had difficulty lately attracting consumers. At one time, it was the go-to brand for many people looking to buy a computer. But, in recent years, its consumer business has faltered as individuals, especially in the U.S., have flocked to Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and even once obscure brands such as Acer and Asus.

Now, the Texas tech titan is making a renewed push for the affections of consumers and the XPS 13 is an important weapon in that push. Like other ultrabooks, it’s an attempt to emulate Apple’s popular MacBook Air by offering a thin, light laptop with good power that has a full-size screen and keyboard, starts up and resumes quickly, uses a solid-state drive and claims decent battery life.

The XPS 13 uses a thinner screen border and a full-size keyboard.

However, Dell’s entry offers an interesting twist: It packs a 13-inch screen into a footprint that is closer to that of models with just an 11- or 12-inch display. This makes it easier to fit in a briefcase or on an airplane tray table in coach. When placed atop a MacBook Air with the same-size screen, the Dell is noticeably smaller.

Dell uses edge-to-edge glass for its screen and leaves much less of a bezel, or border, around the screen, than the Apple does. The XPS 13 isn’t smaller than its competitors in every dimension. It’s thicker and a tad heavier than the comparable MacBook Air. And, like the Apple, it’s significantly heavier than Toshiba’s ultrabook. But the shorter width and height are a nice touch.

I’ve been testing the Dell XPS 13, and there is a lot to like about it, even beyond its compact dimensions. I found it to be solid and well built, speedy and with a good, backlit keyboard, a bright screen, and good looks. It emerged from standby mode quickly and reliably. But this machine has a major downside: subpar battery life. In my standard test, it fell about an hour short of the longest-lived competing ultrabook I’ve tested and two hours short of the 13-inch MacBook Air.

Like other ultrabooks, the XPS 13 isn’t a bargain computer. It’s costlier than the typical, bulkier Windows laptop, which can be had for $400 to $700. But, at $999 with 4 gigabytes of memory and a 128 gigabyte solid-state drive, the Dell is $300 less than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the same specs. Both machines use Intel’s midrange i5 processor. Dell offers an otherwise identical model with double the solid-state storage for $1,299, and a model with double the base storage and a more powerful processor for $1,499.

The model Dell sent me for testing was high end. But based on my tests of other ultrabooks—all designed to tight standards promulgated by Intel—I have no reason to doubt the base model with the midrange processor also is speedy, and no reason to recommend the costlier chip.

The XPS 13, which runs Windows 7 and is part of Dell’s premium consumer line, has a silvery aluminum top and a base made of carbon fiber. It rests on two long rubber runners. The battery is sealed and ports are minimal. There are two USB ports—one is the faster USB 3.0 type—and a video-out port called a Mini Display Port.

The spacious keyboard has nicely separated keys. The touch pad is large, with no physical buttons. But I found it required tweaking in its buried settings screen before it felt right for me.

I was annoyed that, out of the box, the top row of function keys that is commonly used to adjust things like brightness and volume also requires you to hold down a special key to get to these controls. But this can be changed in a settings panel and Dell says it’s considering changing the way this works.

The 13-inch screen fits nicely in a smaller footprint than the Mac’s, but has a lower resolution than the Apple screen of the same size. So, an identical Web page in the identical browser displays more on the MacBook Air than on the Dell XPS 13.

Dell says this is because it had to use the lower-resolution panel for a special manufacturing process it employed on the new ultrabook. It says it will increase the resolution later this year.

Dell’s ultrabook comes with a standard suite of Microsoft and Dell software, including the Windows Live Essentials consumer package, which includes email, and a photo and video program. A starter edition of Microsoft Office contains somewhat stripped-down versions of Word and Excel.

The computer easily handled other programs I installed, including the Google Chrome browser, and Apple’s iTunes.

But Dell still clings to the bad old habit of loading in software you may not want, for which it presumably gets paid. In particular, it has added a Dell-branded Bing toolbar to the Internet Explorer browser.

As noted above, battery life was disappointing. In my test, where I use full brightness, disable power-saving software, leave on the Wi-Fi, and play a loop of music, the battery on the XPS 13 lasted just under four hours, the worst I’ve seen on an ultrabook.

By contrast, in the same test, the longest-lived ultrabook I’ve tested, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, got nearly five hours, and the MacBook Air almost six hours. I estimate you could likely get five hours on the Dell in a more normal usage pattern.

Ultrabook shoppers looking for a well-built, unusually compact 13-inch model should consider the Dell, but the relatively poor battery life might be a deal breaker for some.

Write to Walt at walt.mossberg@wsj.com

Mobile Device That's Better for a Jotter Than a Talker

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:02:55 +0000

Lots of folks carry a smartphone, and, at least some of the time, tote a second mobile device—an iPad or other tablet. But some people might prefer a product that combines the two. Similarly, many have come to love the finger-controlled interface popularized by Apple, but might prefer at times to use a stylus, a common tool in the pre-iPhone days.

[ See post to watch video ]

Samsung is hoping to offer all of the above. On Sunday, it’s introducing to the U.S. a phone-tablet hybrid with a large 5.3-inch screen that uses a stylus as well as your fingers. It’s called the Galaxy Note and costs $300 with a two-year AT&T contract.

While the Note could be mistaken for a small tablet, Samsung insists it’s a phone that merely offers some of the roominess of a tablet. And in fact, it runs the last purely phone-oriented version of Google’s Android operating system, called Gingerbread. This product positioning may be due to bad memories of another company’s effort to sell such a ’tweener: Dell’s 5-inch Streak, which was marketed as a tablet that could make calls and failed miserably in 2010.

After testing the Galaxy Note, I have decidedly mixed feelings about it. It isn’t a very practical phone and, as a tablet, it can’t match the experience of the iPad, which is more spacious and has over 150,000 apps designed for it. However, I can see where some folks might consider the 5-inch screen a good trade-off for much better portability than other tablets, and Samsung has done some very interesting work in making the stylus, which is stored in a slot on the device, useful.

The S Memo app lets the Note’s stylus draw in different colors and to emulate a brush or marker.

As a mobile phone, the Galaxy Note is positively gargantuan. It’s almost 6 inches long and over 3 inches wide. When you hold it up to your ear, it pretty much covers the entire side of your face. You look like you’re talking into a piece of toast.

The Note is so big, an iPhone can almost fit within its display. And it dwarfs even the more-bloated crop of recent Android phones, like Samsung’s own Galaxy S II series, whose screen can be as large as 4.5 inches. And while it can fit into a large pocket or handbag, the Note isn’t going to slip unobtrusively into your jeans or a small purse. It weighs 6.28 ounces, nearly 30 percent more than the iPhone and nearly 50 percent more than some Galaxy S II models.

For people who use Bluetooth earpieces all the time, or who primarily use the speakerphone function, the Note’s size may not be a problem. But for the rest, the Note is just too large to go without a more reasonably sized phone, which defeats the one-device argument.

Voice quality in normal use was good. But, in my limited tests of its Bluetooth voice capabilities, the caller on the other end felt the Note sounded significantly worse than the iPhone or other Android models I’ve tested.

However, as a data device, I liked the Note a lot. Its screen sports a high resolution that made photos, videos and text look very good. It uses AT&T’s high-speed LTE data network, where available, and in my tests it was very fast. The larger screen enabled more of a Web page to be visible without scrolling than on typical phones.

Like all Android devices, it has fewer, and, in my opinion, generally lower-quality third-party apps than the iPhone. But those I tried worked well. The Note was consistently speedy and responsive.

The 8-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front camera both did a good job. Photos and videos I shot from the rear camera were excellent. But I found the sheer size of the Note undercuts its convenience as a camera and there’s no dedicated camera button or quick way to launch the camera when the screen is locked, as there is on some other phones.

In moderate mixed use, where I played music and videos, surfed the Web, texted, used email constantly and took pictures, the Note’s battery lasted more than a full day between charges.

Unlike Apple, Samsung allowed AT&T to load a bunch of its own apps you might not want on the Note, like a $10 to $15 a month program for locating family members via cellphone GPS. A particularly egregious example is a Yellow Pages app that’s jammed into the very top of your contact list.

Another drawback: While other Android phones I’ve tested can be plugged into either a PC or a Mac so you can manually transfer files onto them, I couldn’t get the Note to do this with either of two Macs I tested with it. It did work with Windows machines.

The stylus is a big plus, at least for users who like to jot down notes, create sketches or annotate documents in a way that’s much more precise than using a fingertip. Even on the iPad, which wasn’t designed for a stylus, third-party styli have become quietly popular, but Samsung has taken the idea much further.

The Note’s stylus, called the S Pen, can be used instead of a finger to launch and operate apps. But that isn’t its main purpose. It’s meant to work closely with a special app called S Memo that allows you to take notes or make sketches. These can be saved or shared via email or text messaging, or uploaded to sites like Facebook. They can include photos or typed text.

The software allows the stylus to draw in different colors and widths and to emulate a brush or marker.

A button on the side of the stylus can be pressed while tapping the stylus on the screen to bring up a light version of S Memo for quick notes, or to capture whatever is on the screen as a photo that you can annotate with the pen and send off to others.

Samsung plans more pen-oriented apps, and there are some games and drawing apps for the stylus. Some similar apps are available for the iPad and iPhone, but Samsung is investing more in the stylus and what it can do. For people who like jotting notes or sketching, the stylus alone could be a reason to buy the Note.

The Samsung Galaxy Note isn’t for everyone, and I can’t recommend it as the main mobile phone for most people. But as a stylus-driven small tablet, it might be just what some users are looking for.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

Apple, Suppliers Test Tablet With Smaller Screen

Lorraine Luk and Jessica E. Vascellaro — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:30:14 +0000

Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test a new tablet computer with a smaller screen, people familiar with the situation said, as it looks to broaden its product pipeline amid intensifying competition and maintain its dominant market share.

Officials at some of Apple’s suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has shown them screen designs for a new device with a screen size of around 8 inches, and said it is qualifying suppliers for it. Apple’s latest tablet, the iPad 2, comes with a 9.7-inch screen. It was launched last year.

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There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!

Kara Swisher — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:26:06 +0000

Just as the annual Consumer Electronics Show kicks off this week, according to a report from the NPD Group: Consumer electronics sales during this past holiday period dropped six percent from last year.

That should be some not-so-welcome news for the vendors at the Las Vegas gadget confab, which is seeking to show off new wares to excite said consumers.

Those offerings had better step it up, from a look at the NPD Weekly Tracking Service, which noted that the decline was coming off another decline from a year ago.

While 2011′s drop was not as bad as 2010′s, it’s not the right direction, although the tally did not include some of the more explosive device categories being prominently featured at CES, such as tablets.

Said NPD: “Total consumer technology sales (excluding cell phones, tablets, e-readers, and video games) fell 5.9 percent to around $9.5 billion for the 5 weeks ending December 24, a slight improvement over the 6.2 percent decline in 2010.”

Sales of personal computers and televisions fell 4 percent, with flat unit volumes.

“2010 was the first year in quite awhile where the real drags on the core CE marketplace were not TVs and PCs,” said Stephen Baker, VP of industry analysis at NPD, in a press release. “Revenue for those two segments outperformed while the rest of the market dropped by more than 7 percent. The accelerated rate of decline in older technology categories such as DVD, GPS and MP3 players put a ceiling on how well the industry could perform during the holiday.”

Consumers did snap up flat-panel TVs, with screen sizes of 50 inches and higher rising by 32 percent in unit sales.

And the rocky 3-D TV business also grew by more than 100 percent, with TVs with “3D capability accounting for more than one in every five dollars spent on TVs during the holiday.”

Also up: Home theater systems (10 percent) and stand-alone streaming devices (65 percent).

But those increases did not stem the overall negative tide.

For other sectors, here’s the damage to holiday revenue in percentage change from 2011 dollars spent:

Blu-ray players: Down 17 percent.

Camcorders: Down 42.5 percent.

Digital picture frames: Down 37.5 percent.

GPS: Down 32.6 percent.

HDD: Down 25.1 percent.

Mice and keyboards: Down 7.1 percent.

MP3 players: Down 20.5 percent.

Multifunction printers: Down 9.9 percent.

Point-and-shoot cameras: Down 20.8 percent.

MORE CES NEWS:

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Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)

What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)

Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market

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FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!

Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber

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Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)

Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question

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Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)

Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile

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Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops

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At CES 2012, 3-D Is Riding Shotgun to "Smart" TVs

Lauren Goode — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:48:29 +0000

After years of flogging 3-D TVs at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, television makers are trying a different tactic.

For 2012, they are focusing on making TVs “smarter” by enabling them to connect to the Internet for apps and video services on the Web.

But that doesn’t mean 3-D is going away. It’s just riding shotgun with smart TVs.

Smart TV is not a new concept, of course. Up until now, it has been defined as Internet-connected television achieved through a separate box or device that connects to the TV and streams Internet content, or via a computer-like processor built directly into the TV.

On the showroom floor in Las Vegas next week, electronics makers including Samsung Electronics, Sony and LG Electronics are expected to show off more television sets that bring Internet connectivity to entertainment centers for the home. Yesterday, Google announced that LG will join the list of companies supporting Google TV; Samsung, Sony, and Vizio Inc. have also adopted Google’s Internet TV technology.

With Apple rumored to have a possible Internet-connected HDTV in the pipeline, TV makers are making all kinds of pushes to bring to market devices that offer consumers a full range of options. For many consumers, the answer for now will still be external devices that offer easy, upgradable solutions, like the Microsoft Xbox, Apple TV, Google TV and even Roku’s latest gadget.

Analysts believe that Internet-enabled TVs will begin to take a larger share of the market by default, eventually becoming a check-off item for consumers, rather than a special feature. Some 60 percent of new televisions being sold in 2012 are expected to have Internet connectivity. According to NPD’s DisplaySearch, connected-TV shipments are expected to reach 138 million globally by 2015, accounting for 47 percent of all flat-panel TVs.

So where does 3-D fit into all this?

TV makers will still be touting 3-D at CES 2012, as many smart TVs will also include 3-D capabilities. Samsung Electronics, for instance, says that more than half of its 2012 TV models will support 3-D. “Our commitment to 3-D is only deepening,” says Ethan Raisel, director of communications at Samsung.

Tim Alessi, Director of New Product Development at LG, estimates that around 20 percent of all LG TV units will support 3-D, and notes that 3-D is featured in 50 percent of the company’s lineup for this year.

But despite the fact that 3-D TV sales in 2011 showed some encouraging gains — with an estimated 21.5 million 3-D units reported to have shipped last year and sales showing significant gains from quarter to quarter — the forced exuberance over three-dimensional screens has been tempered a bit.

That’s likely because it doesn’t matter how well 3-D TV units are selling — for the consumer, anyway. “It’s not really the penetration that matters, it’s the use,” says Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. “You’d be hard pressed to find a 3-D TV owner that actually uses it in 3-D mode even once a week. That’s not a formula for building consumer momentum.”

For TV, 3-D presents a three-headed monster: To start, there are the technical and psychological obstacles of those pesky 3-D glasses — and while autostereoscopic (glasses-free) 3-D technology is being worked on in many R&D labs, industry experts all agree that quality 3-D without glasses is at least a few years away.

Secondly, 3-D presents a chicken-and-egg dilemma that doesn’t exist with smart-TV features — the question of where the viewable content will come from. Many content creators have been holding off on making 3-D programs. The Discovery Channel and ESPN made headlines two years ago when they announced 3-D channels; but in terms of sports, 3-D has been relegated to key events, due to high production costs.

An increasing number of 3-D movies are available on DVD, but moviemakers that hopped aboard the 3-D train early — think Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation — were likely doing so to plant a flag in the ground for when 3-D finally does hit critical mass in the living room, says Scott Steinberg, head of strategic consulting firm TechSavvy.

Sony Chairman and CEO Howard Stringer even said recently, regarding the company’s 3-D TV push, that he hadn’t realized all of the challenges in getting 3-D content in place.

And the third issue affecting the uptake of 3-D has been the cost of the sets. On average, the cost of 47-inch to 50-inch 3-D TV sets is $400 more than similar HDTVs, according to a 2011 report from Retrevo. And while the entire consumer electronics industry has been hurt by a weak U.S. economy, TV sales have been hit particularly hard.

Steinberg says that for the average American household, television purchasing is about being practical right now. “It’s much more important to have the maximum-value TV with Internet capabilities and apps, than to invest in a still-unproven technology like 3-D.”

A December 2011 report from Parks & Associates on consumer purchasing intent also indicates that smart TVs are what’s grabbing the interest of consumers right now.

Even that report points out that smart TVs won’t deliver the killer blow to 3-D. As smart TVs are punched up with even more features — from apps to motion remotes to voice-command capabilities — more middle-class households looking to purchase smart TVs may buy in to 3-D, whether they’re actively looking for it or not.

Whether consumers actually want to sit in their living rooms and wear 3-D glasses to watch TV remains to be seen. For now, TV makers will still insist that they do.

MORE CES NEWS:

Complete coverage

HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet

Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)

What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)

Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market

Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.

Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES

Inside the CES Lost & Found

FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!

Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber

Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different

Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)

Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question

T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service

Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)

Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year

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More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone

Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”

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Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways

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Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV

Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV

Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share

Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)

Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile

AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works

LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way

LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum

Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia

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Non-Fairytale Ending for 2011 Movie B.O. -- Time to Blame the Internet Again (Or Just Bad Movies)?

Kara Swisher — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:52:35 +0000

According to the expected year-end box-office data figures compiled by Hollywood.com, the industry raked in $10.1 billion for 2011 in North America.

While that seems like a nice haul, it’s 4.5 percent less than in 2010. While not enough to result a major downturn in limo-riding and Botox, the results are likely to cause entertainment moguls some worry, since they are accompanied by continuing trends, including another year of lower attendance.

And given that the revenue was unusually bolstered by more higher-priced 3-D movie-ticket prices — Hollywood released several dozen 3-D films in 2011, double the previous year’s amount — the latest numbers are even more disappointing.

While some holiday movies did well — namely “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” which has taken in about $70 million domestically since its opening less than two weeks ago — it pales in comparison to such digital hits as Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 videogame, which pulled in $400 million in one day from the much-desired youth market.

It surpassed $1 billion in sales in 16 days, eclipsing the box office of the blockbuster movie “Avatar,” which took 17 days to gross seven figures.

Does that mean that the continued competition for the leisure time of pretty much everyone between digital and analog has gotten worse — an epic battle of the movie industry versus game players, tablets and smartphones?

Or is it because so many movies made in 2011 turned out to be just awful? (If you saw “New Year’s Eve,” you’ll know exactly what I mean.)

One thing is clear: No one is going to pay for poor-quality content, no matter the screen size.

More number-crunching to come, as the industry debates the issue into 2012 (coincidentally, the title of a movie I happened to like, as you can see below!), and at the upcoming D: Dive Into Media at the end of the month, down near Los Angeles, in the belly of the Web-smacked beast.

Until then, let’s hope it does not come to this next year:

Yahoo's Product Runway: Are You In or Out?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:41:24 +0000

I am here at Yahoo HQ in Sunnyvale, Calif., to check out “Product Runway,” which is the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s attempt to show that it can still innovate.

First and foremost is the launch of Livestand, a personalized news reader that is similar to Flipboard and a variety of other rivals, including — soon — Google.

It’s Yahoo’s attempt to present a business-as-usual feel — amidst a long and agonizing and very public strategic overview that might also include the sale of the company (or not!), in the wake of the recent firing of its last CEO, Carol Bartz.

It has caused a lot of trauma inside Yahoo, which can’t help with innovation.

But we press on!

In other words, despite the three-ring circus going on outside, Yahoo wants you to know it is still hard at work.

We begin:

10:35 am: As the strains of U2 die out, Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving takes the stage, which is actually set up in the company’s cafeteria. I can smell lunch being made nearby and I am hungry.

Apt — Yahoo certainly needs to show off a lot of cool stuff or its fate will be cooked.

No pressure, Blake!

“Personally, I am more bullish on Yahoo today,” he said. “What is Yahoo? Simple. It’s the premier digital media company. Period. Stop.”

Oh, if it were only that easy.

10:46 am: Irving pulls out his favorite slide, which looks like a chemistry test. It lists the various elements of the product strategy, with things like personalization, mobile, premium.

Now to Livestand, which is available on the Apple iTunes app store right now.

Don’t all rush at once!

Irving notes that Livestand is more than just an app — it is a platform.

In other words, Yahoo wants to help publishers publish online. Kind of a Facebook of content.

If Yahoo can pull it off, that is. (And, of course, unless Facebook decides to do the same.)

10:50 am: Livestand is an HTML5 “personalized living magazine.”

“This is the way Web pages are going to look,” declares Irving. Which is to say, heavy on photos, swoopy navigation, a television screen-like interface.

Irving uses the example of Surfer magazine, which is a good idea since waves always look pretty. Especially in a video-in-frame with Kelly Slater in Hawaii.

But, in essence, for anyone who has used Flipboard for years now, none of this is entirely different.

10:54 am: The look of what would be the Yahoo News page is actually much more interesting, since it is clearly a whole lot better than the Web page.

Irving also shows off a “living ad” — in this case, an unusually snuggly couple on a couch. It is cool, but creepy.

When launched, the ad has tap points. Irving — naughtily declaring about what is an ad, “I’ll tap that” — taps the lady’s butt, which would also have been my move. We learn about the jeans, of course.

10:58 am: Irving then shows off the ability to add feeds.

Next, something called “Cocktails.” First up, a developer tool called Yahoo Mojito and Yahoo Manhattan, which is a hosting service. The company will open-source both the technologies in 2012.

Irving brings up Mike Kerns, VP of Personalization & Social, who came to Yahoo when it bought the innovative sports fan site called Citizen Sports.

“We like to ship sh#t,” he notes. I like Mike Kerns immediately.

Kerns intros C.O.R.E. No, it is not a secret government organization that takes out fussy bloggers, who might be more critical than Yahoo execs would like.

In fact, it stands for “content optimization relevance engine.” Of course it does.

Simply put, C.O.R.E. is trying to link the right content or whatever to the right consumers and who likes what. Ladies like this, dudes like this. Apparently, “men of multiple ages” enjoy stories about golden chicken.

11:11 am: Kerns is moving on to social, especially its integration with Facebook. While much touted, sources tell me it has gone slower than expected in terms of use, but that it is improving.

Kerns talks about the idea of matching content to conversations to interests and, well, you know — the now exhausting world of modern media consumption.

The world in which you can no longer simply read an article and enjoy it — you must comment, share, discuss, parse, tweet.

Does anyone remember when you read something cool and just kept it to yourself?

Forget it, pal! It is a full-information society now and you better get on board and start poking your friends about every little thing.

(Personally, I plan on becoming a hermit in 3 … 2 … 1.)

11:18 am: Now Tim Parsey, who is Yahoo’s design head. He is hands down the most delightful exec the company has had in a while, mostly because he loves to smirk adorkably.

He shows off Yahoo’s first original design, which was a dull list. And then another really bad logo. But Parsey loves it! It’s kitschy!

Smirk attack!

Parsey moves into what has to happen now, which is to deliver a much more emotional experience and a much better designed one. He uses words like “humanism.”

Say what? He is right — Yahoo has for too long completely ignored design as an important part of the experience.

That’s why Flipboard was so quickly touted — it was pretty and fun. And it is why everyone is simply forced to love Apple products.

11:22 am: Parsey even has a code for it, called REM — for rational, emotional and meaningful.

He shows off a weather app. People take photos and they can be used in the app. Then Yahoo Mail for the iPad, whic is also handsome with photos and video. Livestand, also pretty.

“Great way to differentiate,” says Parsey. He calls it “one Yahoo!” Indeed.

11:35 am: I’ll admit it. After Parsey-fest, I zoned out for a sec when IntoNow dude, Adam Cahan, comes up.

Donut emergency!

Back to IntoNow, it’s the television indexing service that Yahoo bought in April.

Essentially, more ways to watch the media — in this case, video — and do 53 other things at the very same time. Memo to humanity: We will all be paying continuous partial attention for the rest of eternity.

Like I said: Hermitage!

11:41 am: Product dude Irving is back, making a point that, despite all the public mishegas, Yahoo has been busy at innovating.

A redo of email, better search, social “Facebar” with Facebook, Flickr for Google Android.

Irving is correct — Yahoo’s engineers have been hard at work and deserve kudos for doing so, even with attrition issues, stock declines and questions about the company’s very future being debated daily.

The problem is that too many of these improvements are mostly incremental and essentially table stakes for tech companies, most of whom have introed many more significant innovations in the same time frame as Yahoo has.

Google did Android, Google+ (as well as some notable failures). Microsoft did Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8. Amazon did Kindle Fire. Facebook did a range of major updates, as it has grown like a weed.

And there’s Apple. You might have heard of the iPhone and the iPad.

You get my point. Yahoo’s Product Runway today is well done, but what it really needs to be is just the beginning of a take-off.

11:48 am: Now Q&A time.

The first question is what took so long to get Livestand out, the second is why should people use Livestand since Flipboard and others have already been around for a dog’s age.

I ask about design — mostly because I want Parsey to use the word “delicious” a lot — and also about all the turmoil around the company and its impact on product creation. (I decide not to mention that Yahoo blew its acquisition of the bookmarking site, Delicious, and then sold it.)

Parsey delivers on the delicious scale, noting that Yahoo must have one design experience and yet has a lot of different interfaces. In other words, it cannot be Apple, but it can feel a lot more cohesive.

Irving talks a little bit around the obvious elephant in the room — the future of Yahoo — noting that the product staff was trying to focus and forget the storm going on outside.

“We have dreams about what this company can be,” says Irving.

You and me both, brother.

12:04 pm: More questions that are too detailed for my tastes, since they have delivered lunch and I can see it and I am ravenous.

As Parsey might say: It looks deliiiiiccccious.

Now, let’s hope Yahoo can do even more tasty stuff.

I Am Number 4S? -- No Sparkly iPhone 5 Disappoints Apple Fans (and Wall Street)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:08:46 +0000

Apple rolled out a new iPhone today. Sort of.

Except it did not have a bigger, flatter screen. It did not have a sleeker, thinner body. It would not need all new polypropylene sleeves and other fancy accessories.

In other words, it was not an iPhone 5.

Oops, after all the breathless stories about this ideal and groundbreaking new device and predictions — including here — that this was the name of whatever Apple was releasing.

In fact, everyone was using that moniker for it, from local television news to vendors to my mother.

Instead, the tech giant launched the new iPhone 4S, which has a faster processor, an improved camera and Siri voice control feature, at a cheaper price.

Very slick, as usual, and full of cool Apple bells and whistles.

Still. Prolonged sighs could be felt all over the blogosphere and on Twitter, where Steve Brown tweeted me: “Can I be bummed now?!?”

You may.

Better still, Davin Bentti wrote: “The ‘S’ stands for ‘Steve, come back!’”

He was referring to the missing Apple icon Steve Jobs, who recently turned over leadership at the company to new CEO Tim Cook. Jobs’s Apple event performances are legendary.

Wall Street also had its iPhone 5 bubble burst, with investors shunning Apple stock. Shares are down almost five percent now.

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Intel Capital, Condé Nast Owner Invest $30 Million in Kno; Intel to Consult on Student Tablet Hardware

Kara Swisher — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 02:17:57 +0000

According to sources close to the situation, Intel Capital and Advance Publications will lead a $30 million investment round in Kno, the high-profile student tablet start-up.

In addition to the funding from its venture capital arm, Intel itself will consult with Kno on its tablet design. Kno, which is getting out of the hardware business, will now focus on its software to manage the devices that are aimed at the college market.

Intel will not manufacture tablets either. Instead, its engineers will consult with Kno on power management, graphics, display, systems integration, which it does for a variety of its customers.

Along with Intel Capital and Advance, current investors will also participate in the round, said sources. But Intel Capital and Advance, the owner of the Condé Nast publishing empire, make up a big part of the funding.

Sources said Intel Capital’s investment is $20 million and Advance and others make up the rest of it.

BoomTown reported in February that the much-funded and high-profile Silicon Valley start-up–aimed at making tablet computers focused at students–was considering selling off the entire hardware part of the business.

Sources said Kno execs have recently decided that the quicker-than-expected uptake in tablet production by a multitude of powerful device makers had made its efforts to package a seamless offering less critical.

Instead, the company will now focus on its robust software and services to offer students on the Apple iPad, as well as upcoming tablets based on Google’s Android mobile operating system and others.

The move is a dramatic shift for the company, which had not shipped significant numbers of the touchscreen device as it has long touted.

In fact, Kno said in November that it would ship a $599 and $899 version of the tablet by the end of the year.

The lower price was for its single-screen device, while the clamshell double-screen version was more expensive.

And, although it has been reported no pre-orders were fulfilled, Kno did indeed ship several hundred of them, built by China’s Foxconn, before stopping doing so earlier this year.

Many have been dubious about Kno’s ambitious hardware efforts.

That’s because marketing a new and complex product like the Kno takes a lot of effort and cash, especially since it is an increasingly competitive market for mobile and portable computing products that includes Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Google, Amazon, Dell and many others.

Before this $30 million, Kno has raised another $46 million in funding to add to an earlier $10 million round.

Sources in February said that the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company considering going back out to raise even more.

Its current backers include prominent venture players like Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, along with angel investors Mike Maples and Ron Conway.

Sources said the shift to deliver textbook and other student-related delivery system would be a better path for all that investment money, since Kno has established a wide range of partnerships with colleges and universities.

In addition, Kno co-founder Osman Rashid has a lot of experience in digital education market. He was also the co-founder of Chegg, the textbook rental business that is reportedly aiming for an IPO soon.

BusinessWeek was first to report that Intel Capital was making the investment in Kno, but the post did not mention Advance’s involvement or that Intel itself was licensing the hardware design business from Kno.