Reuter site - Facebook movie underscores cultural phenomenon

This article was sent to you from bombastic4000@yahoo.com, who uses Reuters Mobile Site to get news and information on the go. To access Reuters on your mobile phone, go to:
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE6905O020101001

Facebook movie underscores cultural phenomenon

Fri, Oct 01 18:25 PM EDT

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook now counts one of every two Americans as a user, would rank behind only China and India in population if it were a country and has an estimated value of more than $30 billion, larger than that of Starbucks.

What could possibly be next for a website that was created in a Harvard dorm room six years ago? Try a Hollywood film, "The Social Network," that opens nationally on Friday and is already prompting discussion of Academy Awards.

Many of the film's details are contested. But the very notion that average moviegoers will go to a film built around the history of a tech company underscores the extent to which Facebook has become a cultural mainstay.

"Facebook is more than just a geek phenomenon. It's very mainstream," said Dave McClure, a former executive at Web payment company PayPal and now an investor in tech start-ups.

The world's largest social network, Facebook allows people to connect with their real-world friends and acquaintances online and do everything from sharing baby photos and personal news to playing electronic versions of Scrabble.

Grandmothers, politicians and rock stars are among the more than 500 million people using the service worldwide. That helped it surpass Google Inc as the website on which Americans spend the most time every month.

Facebook taps into a basic need that people have to connect with each other, said David Weinberger, a researcher at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

"Humans are an innately social species," said Weinberger. "We flock to social networking sites as it if was natural, because it is natural."

Under the direction of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 26-year-old co-founder, the company has grown from a service available only to college students into a Web powerhouse, navigating a series of sticky privacy issues along the way.

It has become so big and popular, say industry analysts, that it poses a financial threat to established Internet businesses like Google and Yahoo Inc.

Still privately held, the company will not sell stock to the public any sooner than 2012, Facebook board member Peter Thiel said recently. A brisk market in private shares of Facebook already exists, with the company valued at more than $30 billion, according to recent trades on Sharespost, one such secondary market.

Thiel believes the new movie -- which he said "contains a lot of inaccuracies and petty lies and distortions" -- will nonetheless add to Facebook's influence.

"It is actually going to encourage young Americans to move to Silicon Valley and to try to start great new companies. So I think the movie will do a lot more good than evil," he said.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Peter Cooney)

The most thorough: 'The Social Network' Review: A Pie in Zuckerberg's Facebook

Sent from TIME Mobile. To get the free TIME Mobile application on your own BlackBerry device today, visit http://app.time.com

http://bit.ly/9roRG3
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

ALIENS!!! Found: An Earthlike Planet at Last

Sent from TIME Mobile. To get the free TIME Mobile application on your own BlackBerry device today, visit http://app.time.com

http://bit.ly/bBCEV0
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

'We here at RIM are intent on leading the transition from innovator to imitator!' (Sic)

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Reuter site - RIM unveils PlayBook tablet to compete with iPad

This article was sent to you from bombastic4000@yahoo.com, who uses Reuters Mobile Site to get news and information on the go. To access Reuters on your mobile phone, go to:
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE68Q59U20100927

RIM unveils PlayBook tablet to compete with iPad

Mon, Sep 27 18:51 PM EDT

<p>By Gabriel Madway</p>

<p><span class="articleLocation">SAN FRANCISCO</span> (Reuters) - Research In Motion unveiled a tablet computer on Monday that it hopes will leapfrog Apple's iPad with its potential for social networking, media publishing and corporate uses.</p>

<p>The tablet, named BlackBerry PlayBook, has a seven-inch screen and dual facing cameras. It has WiFi and Bluetooth but needs to link with a BlackBerry smartphone to access a cellular network.</p>

<p>Shares of RIM spiked 2 percent before paring gains slightly in after-hours trade following the announcement, made at the company's annual developers' conference in San Francisco.</p>

<p>The Waterloo, Ontario-based company has recently struggled to impress investors and analysts, who mostly shrugged off the August launch of its Torch smartphone and fret about eroding support among its core corporate clientele.</p>

<p>"PlayBook delivers a no-compromises web experience," co-Chief Executive Mike Lazaridis told the developers, who responded with intermittent applause.</p>

<p>RIM expects to ship the device to corporate customers and developers in October and to consumers early in 2011, meaning it misses the consumer holiday buying season.</p>

<p>While RIM is pitching the PlayBook as the evolution of its corporate heritage, its hopes the powerful processor and media offerings lure consumers too.</p>

<p>"They talk enterprise but this will get bought by individuals and used for business," IDC analyst Stephen Drake said from the floor of the presentation.</p>

<p>DEVICE DU JOUR</p>

<p>The market for tablets -- touchscreen devices larger than a smartphone and smaller than a laptop -- has gotten more congested since Apple launched its iPad in April, with Samsung and Dell showing off releases in the past two months and others expected from Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba.</p>

<p>While the market's direction is relatively uncharted, most analysts agree success will be measured by which applications each tablet can run.</p>

<p>"RIM has a strong story to tell to developers to say - look, however you want to make things for this thing, we're giving you tools and a platform that will allow you to do that," said Forrester Research principal analyst Charles Golvin.</p>

<p>RIM also launched its own mobile advertising network, following Apple's entry into that market earlier this year. Google's AdMob also has a major presence in mobile advertising.</p>

<p>RIM said developers will receive 60 percent of the advertising revenue, and RIM will provide analytics tools for targeting the ads effectively.</p>

<p>PlayBook can mirror a BlackBerry phone, giving users a bigger screen to view media and edit documents, and wipes all corporate data once the link between the two devices is broken.</p>

<p>The absence of a direct link to the cellular network means network carriers may be less eager to subsidize the device or promote it heavily. But corporate IT departments will likely cheer about its ability to mirror a company-issued BlackBerry without retaining that data when that link is broken.</p>

<p>"It's compelling, certainly to an IT guy, if they can look at this tablet and say it's really nothing we have to lock down," said Kevin Burden from ABI Research. "An IT manager can look at this tablet and say we don't even need to put this on our asset-tracking list."</p>

<p>The PlayBook weighs 400 grams (14 ounces). It will launch with a dual-core, one gigahertz processor running a QNX kernel and operating system that can incorporate BlackBerry OS 6, which RIM introduced in its Torch smartphone in August.</p>

<p>The QNX operating system uses industry standard APIs, or application programing interfaces, meaning developers should have little difficulty in making their games, software and other applications work on the device.</p>

<p>"All the code that is out there, and there is a huge source base out there, (it) is completely portable to QNX," said Dan Dodge, who co-founded QNX and led the company until RIM acquired it less than a year ago.</p>

<p>RIM has yet to set an exact price for the PlayBook but says it will fall in the lower range of prices for consumer tablets already in the suddenly congested market.</p>

<p>Asked if later versions will connect to advanced 4G networks now under development, RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie told Reuters: "That's not a question we're answering today, but it's not a hard one to guess at."</p>

<p>(Reporting by Gabriel Madway in San Fransisco and Alastair Sharp in Toronto; Editing by Frank McGurty)</p>

WAIT TILL THEY GET A LOAD OF ME! - BlackBerry PlayBook - Preview

YouTube - BlackBerry PlayBook - Preview

click here for more news and cool stuffThe Black Rider

it's A Laugh - Inception Trailer A Capella Re-Dub

YouTube - Inception Trailer A Capella Re-Dub

click here for more news and cool stuffThe Black Rider

This is sonme amazing photography. TIME Mobile: The African Plain at Night

Sent from TIME Mobile. To get the free TIME Mobile application on your own BlackBerry device today, visit http://app.time.com

http://bit.ly/9300om
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Interesting article on TIME Mobile: The African Plain at Night

Sent from TIME Mobile. To get the free TIME Mobile application on your own BlackBerry device today, visit http://app.time.com

http://bit.ly/9300om
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Reuter site - Mobile computing set to get "keyless keyboard"

This article was sent to you from bombastic4000@yahoo.com, who uses Reuters Mobile Site to get news and information on the go. To access Reuters on your mobile phone, go to:
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE68F27520100916

Mobile computing set to get "keyless keyboard"

Thu, Sep 16 08:07 AM EDT

By Steven Scheer

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli startup has launched a system that aims to make mobile computing easier by letting users type on invisible keys instead of a keyboard that typically takes up much of the screen.

SnapKeys calls its technology the "keyless keyboard" and has forged a deal with Philips Electronics to market the product, company officials said.

SnapKeys and Philips will split revenue 50-50.

"There is a fundamental problem in entering data on mobile devices," SnapKeys Chief Executive Benjamin Ghassabian told Reuters. "Keyboards were meant for fixed devices, not mobile. And screens are not supposed to be your input device; they are supposed to be output."

He said the keyless keyboard was 10 years in the making.

The success of Apple's iPad -- which Ghassabian says is more entertainment than computer -- shows that people want more portable devices. Around 40 companies seek to market tablet computers, he said.

"The market is moving toward mobile computers -- that's why tablets are coming out," Ghassabian said.

SnapKeys, privately funded with $4 million, and Philips have started approaching the top mobile device and computer companies about using its keyless keyboard.

"We are in the phase of closing deals ... It will take a few months to get to the market," Ghassabian said, adding the system works on all Windows, Symbian and Android-based devices.

The keyboard has four invisible keys -- two on each side of the device's screen -- each comprising six to seven letters. There are other keys for numbers, punctuation and symbols.

At first, the location of the keys appears on the screen but the company believes users will quickly learn the location of letters and will not need the overlay for long. Users tap the invisible keys with their thumbs and the system predicts the words.

SnapKeys says its English version has about 100,000 words and is 92 percent accurate. If the word isn't correct, it can be changed.

Ghassabian said the system, in which typing words is far faster than a typical keyboard, is available in all European languages as well as Chinese. An Indian version is in the works.

"The only competition for us will be voice recognition and that's not working well yet in mobile devices," Ghassabian said, noting it was not as discreet as typing.

He rejected the notion that people will not want to change their typing habits from a keyboard that has been around for a century.

"People used to have horses but when cars came out, not everyone wanted to switch to cars. But when they started driving cars, they didn't want to go back to riding horses," he said.

(Editing by Michael Shields)