marthakowalsky19

As I noted earlier, the electronics distribution giant Avnet today reported surprisingly strong December quarter profits, despite revenues that were just a hair below Street estimates. Where did the extra margin come from?

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/01/26/update-avnet-profits-boosted-by-higher-hdd-prices/

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Wanted: a personal information organiser

Danny Golding wants to sort out a chaotic collection of personal data spread across several incompatible devices, including a paper address book. It should be simple, but it's not

My life is in chaos. I have personal contact details, diary entries, and reminders spread across a Windows XP laptop, Mac desktop, iPad, and Nokia mobile phone (not to mention an old style paper diary and a separate paper address book). I need to rationalise all this information and, ideally, find a way of keeping my various devices in sync, but am debating how best to do this.
As I use a number of Apple devices, one answer is to use the built in Apple apps and keep them in sync via iCloud. This has the attraction of simplicity, but as I am not a dedicated Mac-head, I am reluctant to lock myself into the Apple world.
Google provides an obvious alternative, but would not keep my devices in sync. I'm also a little nervous about giving Google even more access to my personal data.
Can you, or your readers, suggest any alternatives.
Danny Golding

For more than a decade, this question had a simple answer: you put everything into Microsoft Outlook, and everything else synchronised with that. At the time, some mobile devices came bundled with a free copy of Outlook, so this was a good solution even for people who didn't use Microsoft Office.

Today, Outlook is still the standard answer for businesses that use Microsoft Office on Windows PCs, which means most of them. However, the trend is towards more lightweight, consumer-oriented online applications, and Outlook synchronisation is much less common. Most people don't need more than 100 fields for each contact name, including fields for the names of the contact's manager and assistant, which Outlook provides. Nor do they need room for multiple email addresses, fax machines, and websites. Often, they just want the person's name, company name, and room for a couple of phone numbers.

If you want to take the lightweight route, then the obvious solutions are Google, Apple's iCloud, and Microsoft Live. All offer some degree of cross-platform support, but Google is the one most likely to support both PCs and Macs equally well. Of course, you don't have to decide immediately, or ever. There's no reason why you can't use two systems to see which you like best. Indeed, the second service will provide a useful backup.

Desktop email programs usually support more than one email account, so you could sign up for both Google's Gmail (with access to related programs, including Google Docs) and Microsoft's Hotmail (where the related programs include the online versions of Microsoft Office programs). Microsoft Live Mail does the job well, but the latest Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite, with Live Mail and Live Mesh cross-platform synchronisation software, doesn't run on Windows XP. Mozilla's Thunderbird email program and Lightning calendar provide an open source alternative.

If you really want to put everything into a single program ? including to-do lists, journal entries, notes and a full calendar ? then you need a personal information manager or PIM. This used to be a hot product category, but now I suspect there are only a few realistic options. Outlook is the main example, but Time & Chaos 7, Pimero and EssentialPIM might be worth a look. There's also the open source Evolution, which attempts to provide an Outlook substitute for Linux and Windows.

Microsoft Outlook includes an email client (though you don't have to use it) whereas PIMs such as Time & Chaos more often link to your existing email client. However, if you want integrated email, the Chaos Intellect version provides it. Chaos Software also offers the Chaos Host service for $99 (�63) per year. The company says: "In addition to synchronising with our desktop programs, ChaosHost.com also supports many of the newest smartphones for Over-The-Air synchronisation, including iOS (iPhone), Google Android, Windows Mobile, and Palm Pre!"

The more recent Pimero has a free version that appears to offer most of the features you need, but you will have to upgrade to the Standard (�44.87) or Professional (�63.18) edition to get automatic synchronisation and synchronisation with the iPhone and iPad, Google Android, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

With Outlook, you can also get extra features by paying for a service such as Google Apps for Business or Microsoft's Office 365, and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) capability is a feature to look for.

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook will sync your email, calendar and contacts in both directions. Unfortunately, it does not sync notes, tasks, journal entries or distribution lists, thought there is now a gadget for Outlook Tasks. There are independent programs that fill other holes at extra cost, such as gSyncit v3.x, which will sync tasks and notes. There are other useful apps in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Microsoft's Office 365 is a more powerful and better integrated suite than Google Apps. It provides a hosted version of Microsoft Exchange Server so, in theory, setting it up is mainly a matter of adding an Office 365 email account to Outlook 2007 or 2010. Once that's done, the calendar, tasks etc should synchronise as well. However, there are several downloads to install before you "set up your desktop for Office 365". I haven't tried it yet, but I'd be amazed if it didn't include numerous traps for the unwary. Either way, the videos at Office 365: A tour for users will help you decide if it's worth signing up for a free 30-day trial.

If you are not a business professional, I suspect neither Google Apps for Business nor Office 365 is worth the effort.

You could also consider a free option, the Zoho online office suite. Again, it's aimed at business users, but at least it has a Contacts application. There's also a Wiki that you could use as a diary workspace. It looks better than Google Docs, but Zoho + Google Apps lets you combine the two.

By this stage, there ought to be some good online PIMs like Time & Chaos but, apart from Pimero, they seem to be in short supply. I suspect that most people, like me, use a mixture of things including Google and Windows Live and web-based apps such as Evernote, Toodledo, Springpad, Highrise and others too numerous to mention. However, maybe readers can point us both to a better, more integrated solution.

Whatever you choose, bear in mind that having a something that's nice to use is ultimately much less important than something that will export your irreplaceable data in a re-usable format. Phones, laptops and websites last only a few years before they are replaced or upgraded, but your personal information needs to survive for decades.

Jack Schofield

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/askjack/2012/jan/26/ask-jack-personal-data-organiser

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Today in Tech: Amazon's secret publishing weapon

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/money_technology/~3/R9FSgywpF3g/

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Facebook Hires a 'Managing Editor' (and He's a 30 Under 30)

We told you Bloomberg's Dan Fletcher was one of the young talents in the media industry to keep an eye on. Apparently Facebook was also keeping an eye on Fletcher, one of the FORBES 30 Under 30 in Media, because it just hired him to be its new managing editor.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2012/01/26/facebook-hires-a-managing-editor-and-hes-a-30-under-30/

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Thursday, 26 January 2012

Today in Tech: Amazon's secret publishing weapon

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/money_technology/~3/R9FSgywpF3g/

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Piracy is part of the digital ecosystem

When it comes to digital piracy, there is a great deal of hypocrisy ? one way another, everyone is doing it

In the summer of 2009, I found myself invited to a small party in an old bourgeois apartment with breathtaking views of the Champ-de-Mars and Eiffel Tower. The gathering was meant to be an informal discussion among media people about Nicolas Sarkozy's push for the Hadopi anti-piracy bill.

The risk of a heated debate was very limited: everyone in this little crowd of artists, TV and movie producers, and journalists, was on the same side ? that is, against the proposed law. Hadopi was the same breed as the now comatose American Pipa (Protect Intellectual Property Act) and Sopa (Stop Online Piracy Act). The French law was based on a three-strikes-and-you-are-disconnected system, aimed at the most compulsive downloaders.

The discussion started with a little tour de table, in which everyone had to explain his/her view of the law. I used the standard Alcoholic Anonymous introduction: "I'm Frederic, and I've been downloading for several years. I started with the seven seasons of The West Wing, and I keep downloading at a sustained rate. Worse, my kids inherited my reprehensible habit and I failed to curb their bad behavior. Even worse, I harbour no intent to give up since I refuse to wait until next year to see a dubbed version of Damages on a French TV network ... I can't stand Glenn Close speaking French, you see ..."

It turned out that everybody admitted to copious downloading, making this little sample of the anti-Sarkozy media elite a potential target for Hadopi enforcers. (Since then, parliamentary filibuster managed to emasculate the bill.)

When it come to digital piracy, there is a great deal of hypocrisy. One way another, everyone is involved.

For some large players ? allegedly on the plaintiff side ? the sinning even takes industrial proportions. Take the music industry.

In October 2003, Wired ran this interesting piece about a company that specialised in tracking entertainment content over the internet.

BigChampagne, located in Beverly Hills, is for the digital era what Billboard magazine was in the analogue world. Except that BigChampagne is essentially tracking illegal content that circulates on the web. It does so with incredible precision by matching IP numbers and zip codes, finding out what's hot on peer-to-peer networks. In his Wired piece, Jeff Howe explains:

BigChampagne's clients can pull up information about popularity and market share (what percentage of file-sharers have a given song). They can also drill down into specific markets - to see, for example, that 38.35 percent of file-sharers in Omaha, Nebraska, have a song from the new 50 Cent album.

No wonder some clients pay BigChampagne up to $40,000 a month for such data. They use BigChampagne's valuable intelligence to apply gentle pressure on local radio station to air the very tunes favoured by downloaders. For a long time, illegal filesharing has been a powerful market and promotional tool for the music industry.

For the software industry, tolerance of pirated contents has been part of the ecosystem for quite a while as well. Many of us recall relying on pirated versions of Photoshop, Illustrator or Quark Xpress to learn how to use those products. It is widely assumed that Adobe and Quark have floated new releases of their products to spread the word-of-mouth among creative users. And it worked fine. (Now, everyone relies on a much more efficient and controlled mechanism of test versions, free trials, video tutorials, etc.)

There is no doubt, though, that piracy is inflicting a great deal of harm on the software industry. Take Microsoft and the Chinese market. For the Seattle firm, the US and the Chinese markets are roughly of the same size: 75m PC shipments in the US for 2010, 68m in China. There, 78% of PC software is pirated, versus 20% in the US; as a result, Microsoft makes the same revenue from the Chinese as from ... the Netherlands.

More broadly, how large is piracy today? At the last Consumer Electronic Show, the British market intelligence firm Envisional presented its remarkable State of Digital Piracy Study (PDF here). Here are some highlights:
? Pirated contents accounts for 24% of the worldwide internet bandwidth consumption.
? The biggest chunk is carried by bittorrent (the protocol used for file sharing); it weighs about 40% of the illegitimate content in Europe and 20% in the US (including downstream and upstream). Worldwide, bittorrent gets 250 million UVs per month.
? The second tier is made by the so-called cyberlockers (5% of the global bandwidth), among them the infamous Megaupload, raided a few days ago by the FBI and the New Zealand police. On the 500 million uniques visitors per month to cyberlockers, Megaupload drained 93 million UVs. (To put things in perspective, the entire US newspaper industry gets about 110 million UVs per month). The Cyberlockers segment has twice the users but consumes eight times less bandwidth than bittorrent simply because files are much bigger on the peer-to-peer system.
? The third significant segment in piracy is illegal video streaming (1.4% of the global bandwidth.)

There are three ways to fight piracy: endless legal actions, legally blocking access, or creating alternative legit offers.

The sue-them-untill-they-die approach is mostly a US-centric one. It will never yield great results (aside from huge legal fees) due to the decentralised nature of the internet (there are no central servers for bittorrent) and to the tolerance in countries in harboring cyberlockers.

As for law-based enforcement systems such has the French Hadopi or American Sopa/Pipa, they don't work either. Hadopi proved to be porous as chalk, and the US lawmakers had to yield to the public outcry. Both bills were poorly designed and inefficient.

The figures compiled by Envisional are indeed a plea for the third approach ? that is, the creation of legitimate offers.

Take a look at the figures below, which show the peak bandwidth distribution between the US and Europe. You will notice that the paid-for Netflix service takes exactly the same amount of traffic as bittorrent does in Europe!

US Bandwidth Consumption:

Europe Bandwidth Consumption:

Source : Envisional Ltd

These stats offer a compelling proof that creating legitimate commercial alternatives is a good way to contain piracy. The conclusion is hardly news. The choice between pirated and legit content is a combination of ease-of-use, pricing and availability on a given market.

For content such as music, TV series or movies, services such as Netflix, iTunes or even BBC iPlayer go in the right direction. But one key obstacle remains: the balkanised internet (see a previous Monday Note Balkanizing the Web) ? ie, the country zoning system.

By slicing the global audience in regional markets, both the industry (Apple for instance) and the local governments neglect a key fact: today's digital audience is getting increasingly multilingual or at least more eager to consume contents in English as they are released.

Today we have entertainment products, carefully designed to fit a global audience, waiting months before becoming available on the global market. As long as this absurdity remains, piracy will flourish.

As for the price, it has to match the ARPU generated by an advertising-supported broadcast. For that matter, I doubt a TV viewer of the Breaking Bad series comes close to yield an advertising revenue that matches the $34.99 Apple is asking for the purchase of the entire season four. Maintaining such gap also fuels piracy.

I want Netflix, BBC iPlayer and an unlocked and cheaper iTunes everywhere, now. Please. In the meantime, I keep my Vuze bittorrent downloader on my computer. Just in case.

frederic.filloux@mondaynote.com

Fr�d�ric Filloux

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/23/monday-note-piracy-sopa

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Demi Moore Kisses Young 'General Hospital' Co-Star Philip Tanzini In Early Interview

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/demi-moore-general-hospital-interview-kiss_n_1235351.html

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Million views for fans' Star Wars

Star Wars Uncut, a crowdsourced version of the sci-fi classic, passes a million views on YouTube.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-16700913

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Lagerfeld launches online range

Karl Lagerfeld is the latest designer to launch a collection online, taking advantage of growing internet fashion sales.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-16726750

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Jan. 26, 1906: Fred Marriott Lets Off Some Steam

Source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/yw1sEip7W0g/

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The future of books, today

There is much talk of bright tomorrows for publishing at New York's Digital Book World expo, but how optimistic are readers?

While we've all been thinking about Andrew Miller and the Costa's new enthusiasm short stories and Rushdie's troubles in Jaipur, in New York, publishers have been looking to the future.

Many reports from the Digital Book World conference are brimming with positivity, with the independent publisher Dominique Raccah singing the praises of books created "at the end of a community-building process", the author and futurist David Houle celebrating the astonishing fact that "more books [were] published this week than ? in all of 1950" and Barnes and Noble's James Hilt suggesting that the flood of data sweeping through an industry which is finally catching up with the digital age "helps us all". But gloom isn't that far behind ? optimism "wanes" when executives are asked about the future for publishing and readers alike.

When I phoned Neil Gaiman last week to ask him about the stramash over Apple's new iBooks Author app , he said publishing these days was like "the Klondike. Nobody knows what's going on. All they know is that there's gold in them thar hills and they want to try to get hold of it."

Gaiman gives "traditional publishing" five or "maybe 10 years ? But that isn't going to mean fewer books. There'll be a lot more books ? people will just find them differently." After seeing a Kindle in 2007 and downloading 14 books between waiting in the departure lounge and the plane doors being shut he's convinced electronic books will "dominate the world", but he wouldn't begrudge Apple a slice of his income. "You don't write books to make money," he said. "You do it because this is what you love doing." The music industry shows a possible future for publishing, he continued. "There are fewer rock stars travelling the world in their private jets than there were in the old days, but there's a lot more good music."

With Amazon's hit man on their trail and the customers they're all supposed to be focusing on signing up for Amazon's latest cult in droves, hearing the future of books being compared to the present travails of the music industry can only deepen publisher gloom. But what does it mean for readers? The future is coming, whatever device you're reading it on, but does Gaiman's future of "a lot more books" that you "find differently" fill you with despair or delight?

Richard Lea

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jan/26/future-of-books-today

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African tweets: visualised

Graphic: Earlier today the Datablog posted a map of over 11.5m Tweets geo-located in Africa. Here's a preview of the Guardian graphic for tomorrow's paper showing the same data

Jenny Ridley

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/graphic/2012/jan/26/africa-tweets-graphic

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Rhapsody takes battle to Spotify by buying Napster's European operation

US digital music service challenges rival with push in UK and Germany using long-established brand name

Rhapsody has acquired Napster's European operation, marking the music streaming service's first move beyond the US market and kicking off a battle with Spotify.

The US service, which has only been available to American customers for the past 11 years, has reached a deal to acquire Napster International's subscription music business.

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will see Rhapsody launch in the UK and Germany under the Napster brand name and take the fight to the increasingly popular Spotify.

Rhapsody, which acquired and drastically restructured Napster's US business last October, intends to keep all the company's staff and migrate users to its infrastructure in March.

The Napster brand name will be retained in UK and Germany because it is better known in Europe than Rhapsody.

"The acquisition of Napster and its subscriber base in the UK and Germany gives us an ideal entry to the European market," said the Rhapsody president, Jon Irwin. "Through the benefit of scale, the strength of our editorial programming, and strategic partnerships, we can now bring the Napster service to even more consumers on a variety of platforms."

Rhapsody launched in the US in 2001 and claims to be the largest subscription music service in the US with more than 1 million paying customers.

However, it now faces serious competition from Spotify, which is well established in Europe and launched in the US in July. In November, Spotify claimed more than 2.5 million paying subscribers.

Spotify is the biggest subscription service in the UK, while Napster ranks second. Spotify has not launched in Germany, although it is thought to have plans to go live very soon, while Napster is already well established.

"This is the perfect time to extend our borders both geographically and technologically," said Irwin. "Consumer demand for subscription music has never been greater. There is a lot of room for growth in this market and I firmly believe that 2012 is going to be our biggest year yet."

Mark Sweney

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/26/rhapsody-spotify-napster-europe

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Is This The Real Reason Why MegaUpload Was Shut Down?

The internet is up in arms over the federal crackdown of file-sharing website Megaupload, from irate blog posts to coordinated digital attacks on secure government servers. The move appeared to be a sort of governmental muscle flexing in the wake of the successful internet protest of SOPA and PIPA. But was there

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/01/24/is-this-the-real-reason-why-megaupload-was-shut-down/

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