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BetaNews.Com (10 non lus)

U.S. broadband speeds improved in 2010, still second rate against EU

Publié: février 15, 2011, 10:35pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Market research group In-Stat has published the results of its annual assessment of U.S. broadband speeds, which found that the nation's average downstream speed increased by 34% over the course of 2010.
In-Stat says the average downlink speed for broadband subscribers is 9.54 Mbps, up from the 2009 average 7.12 Mbps, which was itself up from 2008 average of 3.8 Mbps. The price of fixed broadband, by comparison, rose by only 4% among the 518 households surveyed.
This projected average speed is actually a bit slower than the average determined by Speedtest.net, which ranks the U.S. #34 in broadband speed with 10.19 Mbps. If we were to use In-Stat's figure in Speedtest's rankings, the United States would knocked down to #37, behind Canada, French island territory St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Taiwan. Naturally, the size and population density of the United States play a major factor in its place on the list. China and India, for example, are all the way down at #83 and #143 respectively.
However, In-Stat asserts that the growth of mobile broadband is behaving as a driver for increasing overall speeds and bandwidth availability on fixed and residential lines. What's more, over one third (38%) of those participants in the survey had a live mobile broadband subscription in addition to their fixed one.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Androidify: I made myself into a Google robot mascot, and you can too

Publié: février 15, 2011, 9:31pm CET par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Who doesn't like a cool avatar? What better for an Android user than you personalized as Google's droid mascot? Yesterday, Google released Androidify to the Android Marketplace, which I downloaded last night. The app starts with the typical green droid, which users can customize to suit their fancies. My first effort, and most certainly not my last, is above. I replaced my Facebook and Twitter avatars last night.
The app is easy enough to use, and it's hugely finger friendly. Just touch and drag to resize head, torso or limbs. Google lets users choose attire, hairstyle and other attributes. But Androidify isn't what I expected. For no particular reason, I imagined that Google's app would use the phone's camera to take a photo and Androidify the image. So much for my imagination.
Google Creative Lab and Larva Labs codeveloped the app, which is a great marketing gimmick. Already the green droid mascot is a hugely appealing and identifiable brand representation of Android. It's smart marketing to let Android enthusiasts do an Avatar droid makeover they can easily share. As I have so oft-times asserted: Enthusiasts are any company's best marketers (To be fair, I heard it first from Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg when we worked together at JupiterResearch). There are more than 700 user reviews.
Androidify is by no means a productivity app, and I expect most people will tire of it quickly. But it's a fun tool for creating new avatars, and, frankly, who really can have enough of them? But is Androidify a fad already out of control? Russell Holly tweeted yesterday: "My twitter feed is a relatively constant stream of #androidify avatars. God help me haha."
Androdify isn't the only Android makeover on the InterWebs. Among them: MetroPCS' "Android for All" contest, which concludes on March 14th. Participants create and customize their own Android robots; winners will be chosen in a vote conducted between March 15-31.
My favorite Christmas 2010 present was a green Android mini collectable purchased for $8.99 from Amazon seller Fancy Toys (the collectible sells for $11.99 today -- now why is that?). DYZPLASTIC is the place for information on upcoming Android collectibles. Series 02 is scheduled to release in March. The Chinese New Year Android mini collectible (photo above) was limited edition and it's adorably cute. I want one! Don't you?
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Tip: Use Finestra Virtual Desktops to bring order to your Windows chaos

Publié: février 15, 2011, 9:26pm CET

By Nick Peers

Here's the rub: you can only afford one monitor, and you frequently find yourself wading through window after window trying to find the right document. Or worse still, you need to switch between two or three windows but keep selecting the wrong one because of the dozens of other open apps and windows cluttering up your desktop.
You could close all these down, or you could try a virtual desktop manager. This effectively takes one desktop and multiplies it a number of times, allowing you to organize your open windows into different virtual desktops: one for your work, another for browsing the web and a third for doing your accounts, for example. And when it comes to choosing the right tool for the job, look no further than Finestra Virtual Desktops.
There are a number of virtual desktop managers out there, but they're largely restricted in the number of desktops they support (typically four) and the functionality they provide. Finestra Virtual Desktops has plenty to recommend it: while it's set up with the default four virtual desktops in place, access the program's options dialogue box and you'll find you can add as many desktops as you want, although we suspect you'll be pushing the envelope wanting more than nine.
Switching between the desktops is simple too: either use a hotkey combination -- [Win] + the desktop's number on the numeric keypad -- or bring up the Switcher window, which divides the screen into thumbnail previews of each desktop, helping you find the right one quickly. You can even move windows between desktops: just bring it to the front and use the required hotkey combo ([Ctrl] + [Win] + the desktop number on the numeric keypad) to shunt it out of the way.
It's all very simple to use, but if you want real control -- including the ability to add, remove and rename desktops for easy identification -- then delve into the program's options dialogue box. Windows 7 users can also move between desktops using the program's taskbar icon, which provides a crude thumbnail of each desktop when you click it -- real-time previews will hopefully make an appearance in a future version.
Finestra Virtual Desktops is open source, and runs on Windows XP or later.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Apple concerned about child labor, suicides at supplier plants

Publié: février 15, 2011, 9:20pm CET par Ed Oswald

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

In its annual public report on conditions at its overseas suppliers, Apple said it had noted an increase in child labor as well as tackling the issue of suicides at Foxconn, one of its biggest overseas partners. It also said that it had continued efforts to improve workplace safety and morale, two issues the company had taken heat for ignoring in the past.
Apple said that poor checks had resulted in the increases in child labor over the past year, and it had instituted efforts to assist its suppliers in preventing it from occurring. One case was especially severe, and the company found the supplier was doing little to fix the problem, or appeared willing to.
Of the 91 underage workers found to be employed, 42 came from this factory alone. Apple has since terminated its involvement with the company, which it did not identify.
Such was not the same for Foxconn, which Apple identified and explained in detail in the audit. A group of Apple executives and two experts led by chief operating officer Tim Cook visited the plant in June of last year to investigate the rash of suicides that were occurring among workers.
Foxconn has been a thorn in Apple's side since at least 2006, when claims of worker abuse first surfaced. At the time, the company found Foxconn violated its work code and pledged to remedy the issue. Its efforts were apparently for naught, as the supplier again made the headlines in 2009 for a rash of suicides at its Shenzhen, China plant. At least a dozen workers committed suicide while on the job, news reports indicated.
1,000 workers were surveyed by Apple independently of Foxconn, and found that while the company had taken steps to provide better support for workers, it needed to do better in monitoring and providing support for those that may be ailing from psychological issues.
"Apple will continue to work with Foxconn through the implementation of these programs, and we plan to take key learnings from this engagement to other facilities in our supply base," it said in the report.
The Cupertino company has been releasing these reports since 2007, and has ever since been auditing all its suppliers for compliance with its Supplier Code of Conduct. 288 facilities have so far been visited by Apple representatives.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Increasing backlash over Microsoft deal a problem for Nokia

Publié: février 15, 2011, 8:10pm CET par Ed Oswald

By Ed Oswald, Betanews

Nokia is coming under increasing criticism for its partnership with Microsoft, with shareholders looking for the removal of CEO Stephen Elop, and a Finnish union looking for severance pay for workers laid off as a result of the deal. It seems to point to a coming showdown that may rear its ugly head at its annual meeting in July in Helsinki.
The shareholder group calls itself Plan B, and is comprised of nine anonymous "small" shareholders of the company that were also former employees. Among their demands is the firing of Elop, restructuring of the Microsoft deal to limit it to the North American market, and adoption of MeeGo as the company's primary smartphone platform.
MeeGo is an open sourced, linux-based mobile platform that Nokia developed in conjunction with Intel. When the Microsoft deal was announced, MeeGo team head Alberto Torres left Nokia, giving rise to speculation that the Finnish phone maker could be abandoning the project.
Overall, Plan B's demands seem to be akin to a circling of the wagons around Nokia's own efforts in an attempt to bring the company back from the brink. Its popular Symbian mobile OS would also get a lifespan extension of five years, and even its Ovi service platform would be a focus of the group "at a later date," all but killed off by Friday's deal.
In a statement to Dow Jones Newswires, Nokia said it was aware of the group's demands, but had not been contacted. It noted the proposed deal and strategy had the full support of its board of directors, and it was focusing on its execution.
Shareholder troubles are the least of Nokia's worries, however. Finnish trade union Pro slammed its decision to adopt the Windows Phone platform, noting the change would result in the loss of jobs for those who worked on Symbian development. About 5,000 Nokia employees are represented by Pro.
Among its own demands is a hefty 100,000 euro severance to each employee in order to defer costs associated with "reeducation."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
HTC Flyer shows value of 7" tablet as a connected notepad

Publié: février 15, 2011, 7:43pm CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Among an announcement of half a dozen new mobile devices, Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC debuted its first Android tablet, called the Flyer. HTC was the first company to release an Android smartphone of any sort and its presence in the Android tablet market could be imposing.
The HTC Flyer is similar to Samsung's Galaxy Tab in a number of ways. Firstly in its size, it has a 7" screen with 1024 x 600 resolution. Secondly, in its OS. It is not running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), the tablet-optimized version of Google's mobile operating system, and will instead run on Android 2.4 (Gingerbread). However it does offer a slightly more powerful processor, running at 1.5 GHz, compared to the Galaxy Tab's 1 GHz.
There is one respect where the Flyer truly shines against the Galaxy Tab, and indeed against most other mobile tablets: in its support for handwriting recognition. Instead of being a finger-only touch device, the Flyer is equipped with HTC's Scribe technology, which allows for stylus-based input. With Scribe, the "Timemark" audio and written note taking software, and built-in synchronization with Evernote, HTC has built Flyer into a compelling "connected notepad."
The whole value of 7" tablets has been in dispute since Apple CEO Steve Jobs referred to them as "tweeners" that compete neither with smartphones nor tablets. So naturally, the Flyer has already been the subject of criticism. Furthermore, observers have begun to criticize HTC's decision to equip Flyer with Gingerbread instead of Honeycomb, but the 7" form factor of the device makes it a logical OS choice, and its inclusion of pen support and specialty notetaking software draw a pretty clear picture of how Flyer can be exploited.
"Clearly, smartphones have transformed our lives but as we observed how people use smartphones, computers and other technologies, we saw an opportunity to create a tablet experience that is different, more personal and productive," said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation in a statement Tuesday. "We are progressing down a path as an industry when people will no longer be in a single device paradigm, but have multiple wireless devices for different needs; this is the direction we are moving."
Another area where the Flyer could outdo the Galaxy Tab is mobile gaming. Yes, with the recent introduction of the "PlayStation Certified" label for Android devices, video gaming on the Android platform has gotten a bit more compelling, but HTC has jumped beyond the app-based downloadable gaming trend and allied with OnLive for streaming video games. Users need an OnLive controller, a subscription to the service, and a fast connection, and they can use Flyer for fully mobile gaming.
As for the rest of the raw specs of the Flyer, it's got 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage plus a microSD slot for a maximum of 64 GB, a 5 megapixel camera and 1.3 megapixel forward-facing chat cam, light sensor, velocity sensor, digital compass, 802.11 b/g/n, Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and HSPA/WCDMA 3G, Bluetooth 3.0 and internal GPS
HTC Flyer will be available internationally in the second quarter of 2011, and pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Apple App Store subscription plan gouges publishers, eats their young

Publié: février 15, 2011, 5:42pm CET par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Somebody call the cops -- eh, antitrust authorities. Apple's subscription plan is here, and it's as bad for many, if not most, publishers as rumored. The first of several key sentences from Apple's press announcement: "Publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a website, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app." That means you Amazon Kindle; before the announcement, all Kindle transactions took place outside the app in a web browser. This change applies to any content, but it's nestled in the subscriptions announcement.
Another piece of nastiness: "Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app." That rule conceptually would prevent some publishers from extending to existing customers the benefits of a free iPad subscription.
So, Apple doesn't prohibit publishers from selling subscriptions outside the app -- how could it and get anyone to offer content? But the company does fix prices. So if publisher A charges 50 bucks a year and wants to offer a holiday or school graduation promotion from its website, the deal must be offered for app subscriptions, too. Remember, Apple collects 30 percent from publishers.
No one should misunderstand other terms, as stated in Apple's press release: "Publishers can sell digital subscriptions on their websites, or can choose to provide free access to existing subscribers. Since Apple is not involved in these transactions, there is no revenue sharing or exchange of customer information with Apple." Based on the wording in context, Apple isn't saying that app subscriptions can be offered free to existing customers but that publishers can offer free subscriptions on their websites (I am asking Apple for clarification).
"Our philosophy is simple -- when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing," Apple CEO Steve Jobs, said in a statement. "All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app."
That "philosophy" could be considered anticompetitive. I laid out why in February 3rd post: "iPad is a devil's deal for publishers." Apple is imposing restrictions on how publishers conduct their business from a monopoly position. Apple has the leading App Store, with 300,000 applications and more than 10 billion downloads. According to IDC, iPad had 87.4 percent share of the global media tablet market in third calendar quarter 2010. That by most measures is a monopoly position. By comparison, Amazon had 41.5 percent e-reader market share in Q3, based on 1.14 million units shipped. Apple shipped 4.2 million iPads in the same quarter and 7.331 million in the one following.
The content changes and subscription rules raise two areas of potential monopoly/antitrust concern:
1. Apple is attempting, whether intentionally or not, to fix prices for all kinds of digital content, with the restriction that pricing must be the same in-app as elsewhere -- all while collecting a 30 percent cut from publishers. There's no anticompetitive problem if few publishers sign up for this devil's deal.
There's an irony here, or perhaps some payback: Music publishers effectively forced Apple to abandon its uniform pricing policy. Now it's Apple dictating pricing and more, because no matter what the publisher makes elsewhere, it will always earn less on in-app subscriptions because of Apple's cut. Mmmm, is that monopoly or Mafioso?
2. Apple's content change affecting Amazon or Barnes & Noble conceptually is an attempt to extend the tablet monopoly into the adjacent e-book reader market. E-books are available for iPad and Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook readers; Apple has its own iBookStore that is exclusive to iOS devices. Both publishers offer readers from the App Store, which they will now either need to pull or keep at grave competitive disadvantage compared to Apple, which will make more on every book sold through the App Store; Amazon and Barnes & Noble would have to give Apple a 30 percent cut for every sale, something not required before today's announcement. The book publishers must either raise prices or suck up profits handed to Apple, should they keep their iOS apps. The maneuver could allow Apple to crush the emerging e-reader market for devices like Kindle and Nook, with price being leverage.
The deadline for complying to the subscription changes, which presumably apply to content changes, is June 30, according to a post at All Things Digital. However, earlier, some publishers put the date at April 1.
By the way, I consider Apple 2.0 Blog reporting to be fairly friendly to Apple. When a Philip Elmer-DeWitt post has headline "Steve Jobs to pubs: Our way or highway" or calls an Apple plan "as draconian as the publishers feared," something really is amiss. Hehe, perhaps more publishers will consider Android tablets now.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Bad things will happen when we run out of iPv4 addresses, and it's coming sooner than you think

Publié: février 15, 2011, 3:20pm CET
By Larry Seltzer

You might have read about how the long-warned end of available IPv4 address space is a bit more imminent than it was, as the IANA, which governs IP address allocations on the Internet, has run out of IPv4 addresses to allocate. Simply stated: The IPocalypse is coming! It's not going to be the end of civilization, or even just the Internet, as we know it, but there will be some big problems. We're not prepared for them and we're not even working all that hard on preparing.
Here's what we know will happen in the short term: There are 5 RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) for different parts of the world -- AfriNIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, and the RIPE NCC. These organizations get address blocks from the IANA and dole them out to ISPs and other entities in their regions based on their own policies.
Each of the RIRs still has some IPv4 addresses left, but various models show them starting to run out within about a year. After that, at some point, ISPs will begin to run out. The models are less clear on this. Stephan Lagerholm's ipv4depletion.com calculates that the first RIR to run out will be APNIC (Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre) in 228 days (as I write this), but it has the last RIR depletion date in December, 2016. That may sound odd, but there still are over 500 million free addresses by his calculation and it's not hard to see that these things get consumed faster in different parts of the world.
Consumer Market isn't Ready for IPv6
At the same time, there is a new addressing scheme, IPv6, which is unfortunately incompatible with the existing one, but which has an address space so large that we may just take it with us to the first few planets we colonize. Even though IPv6 has been up and running for many years and support for it has been in just about every operating system for ages (Windows XP has had it as a core network protocol since SP1 in 2002), actual use of IPv6 is rare. Hardware support for it is good in business-oriented equipment, but it's unusual for consumer equipment or consumer ISPs to support it. So if things were to be in this state when the well runs dry, we would start seeing sites and users having trouble getting Internet connectivity.
By the way, June 16, 2011 is World IPv6 Day. The Internet Society is trying to arrange a 24 hour test run of IPv6 with the various parties who would need to be involved, generally websites and network operators. I guess we have to start somewhere, and some companies -- Google comes to mind -- have been ahead of the curve on this. But Google's IPv6 content does me no good if my networking equipment and ISP don't support IPv6. And they don't. If you're a normal consumer, go try to do better than I did: Comcast and Verizon have limited tests of IPv6 going on, but if you're not in a test area you're SOL, and go try to buy a consumer router that supports IPv6.
What will happen when we run out? Will the Internet break? Will it devolve into some sort of post-IPocalyptic dystopia like in "Soylent Green" or "Blade Runner" or "Stand on Zanzibar?"
Not that bad, but not good. The technology is mature enough, but our implementations, especially on the consumer side, are utterly unprepared:
- Our networking hardware, as I said above, is not compatible. Some of it may be firmware-upgradable, but you gotta know that networking vendors want to sell you a new unit. I did a search on Amazon.com for IPv6 in networking equipment and didn't see much (for some reason I got a lot of hits on iPod skins), but the Apple AirPort supports IPv6.
- Our applications are generally unprepared. Not all applications will break on IPv6, but it hasn't generally been considered bad form to assume IPv4 in an app, and many do.
- Ourselves are unprepared. Do you know how to configure an IPv6 network? I wish I could say I did, but, as I said, I can't even get support for it from my provider, so there's not a lot I can do. I could use Teredo, which tunnels IPv6 traffic over IPv4 networks, but there are lots of problems with it and it's more of a hack than a solution. Why bother?
If Only IPv4 Addresses Could Be Sold
I rather suspect -- maybe hope is a better word -- that ISPs have been hoarding IPv4 addresses for this eventuality. Most of the consumer ISPs still give you a real, publicly-addressable IP address for your cable modem or whatever you use. But they don't have to. They could switch to what is known as 'supernatting': give you an address in a big private 10.x.x.x network. This will probably wreak havoc on many applications and consumers won't stand for it for long.
One solution that gets a lot of abstract support is to create a market for IPv4 addresses and let prices sort out the shortage. At some point the cost of IPv4 will be such that the free, or nearly free, IPv6 will be too attractive. This is completely logical and, in fact, a great idea. Too bad it can't be done.
I can't buy an IP address from you; I can lease it if you're an ISP. But there's no mechanism in the routing infrastructure for entities to resell IP address blocks allocated to them. Maybe there should be, but as far as I know, there isn't. It would be possible for such entities to donate blocks back to the IANA or RIR, and in fact some of this has happened. Back in the old days they handed out /8 blocks (16777216 addresses) pretty casually, and if you look at the map of them you'll see quite a few allocated to entities which probably don't need all that space. Lots to the Defense Department and other governmental entities, big companies: GE, Apple, Ford, HP, DEC (in other words HP), AT&T, Prudential Securities, duPont, Merck, Halliburton -- you get the idea. There's a lot of wastefully-allocated space out there. But even if you could recover all of it, it would only kick the can down the road. Until last year Interop owned a /8 address block. It's incomprehensible that they were granted one, but they had the decency to give it back in the end.
It's possible that some of those companies could become ISPs in order to monetize this valuable asset. Perhaps they would only need to partner with an ISP to do so. Quite a few of these entities could use the money (the US Postal Service, for example). And eventually ISPs will have to adjust costs to push their users onto IPv6; probably they'll allocate IPv6 address to everyone and then give incentives to customers to surrender their IPv4 addresses.
What makes me so sure things will be bad? If there's one thing that users hate, it's having to change their software. A whole lot of that is going to happen when we move to IPv6, and there's no way around it. We do have to move. People will be outraged that this came with no warning.
By the way, do you need to blame someone for this problem? Internet pioneer Vint Cerf says it's his fault.
[Editor's Note: Original version posted February 14, 2011, 12:14 p.m. ET.]
Larry Seltzer is a freelance writer and consultant, dealing mostly with security matters. He has written recently for Infoworld, eWEEK, Dr. Dobb's Journal, and is a Contibuting Editor at PC Magazine and author of their Security Watch blog. He has also written for Symantec Authentication (formerly VeriSign) and Lumension's Intelligent Whitelisting site.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
Say, whatever happened to that 1 million Verizon iPhones sold announcement?

Publié: février 15, 2011, 12:25am CET par Joe Wilcox

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Mobile World Congress is too great a public relations opportunity for Apple to pass up. The company is notorious for stealing thunder from events like this one. That's why something missing today is so revealing. There was no Apple press release touting Verizon iPhone weekend sales. Even if there was no industry mobile event in Barcelona, it would be typical for Apple to tout early sales, as it did with iPad (300,000 first day) and iPhone 4 (1.7 million first weekend).
Apple's silence strongly suggets that those short lines on launch day were no flukes. I heard lots of excuses, in Betanews comments or Twitter, citing bad weather. For example, in response to my post "Verizon iPhone post mortem: Three lessons and some humble pie," Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg tweeted: "You're kidding right? Preorders and reservations along with frigid weather means no lines. But better prepared than not." To which I responded: "It's sunny here in San Diego and lines are short at Apple Store. 'There's not been a line at any point' said one rep."
If people want something bad enough, they'll wait in the cold to buy it -- and by measure of blog and news media hype plenty of people were ready to do just that. Last week, Bob Brown wrote at Macworld UK: "More than a quarter of AT&T customers and about a quarter of Verizon customers say they are willing to wait in line on Feb. 10 to switch over to Apple iPhones that will run on Verizon's 3G wireless network." He and others based first-day expectations on a 700-person survey conducted by uSamp. There were others.
As for the preorder excuse, which got tired real fast, Apple and AT&T took preorders for iPhone 4, too. They didn't stop people from lining up on launch day; and if the preorders were enough to lift launch weekend sales above 1 million, surely there would have been an announcement from either Apple or Verizon, perhaps both, by now.
I'm not suggesting sales were bad, which is a relative measure. But there's every indication, starting with those short lines all weekend long (for the most part none, really), that first-weekend sales weren't what either Apple or Verizon expected. Otherwise, Apple would gloat and steal something from Mobile World Congress Day 1 announcements.
Perhaps many vocal AT&T iPhone users who vowed to switch because they were sick of dropped calls backed down when assessing switching costs or what they would give up -- like the ability to make calls and do data simultaneously. It's an addicting capability I wouldn't give up. Perhaps Verizon so successfully marketed the Droid line over the past 18 months that there were fewer customers willing or capable of switching, despite sweet incentives to do just that. Perhaps many other potential buyers are holding out for iPhone 5 before getting locked into another two-year contractual commitment. There are probably plenty of possible reasons for which any combination could be right.
For my blogger friends or journalist colleagues, I've got some advice: If you read nothing else this month, or even this year, make it "The Order of Things: What college rankings really tell us," by Malcolm Gladwell in the current The New Yorker. Gladwell uses rankings conducted by Car and Driver and US News & World Report to show how some statistical analyses can land far off the mark. It's important reading, because right now it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry with an Excel spreadsheet is making crazy predictions about iPad, iPhone and the mobile device market in general. To reiterate, based on analyses reported in the two weeks before Verizon iPhone went on sale, there should have been long lines and lots of switchers from Android handsets from within the carrier or coming from AT&T for more reliable service. Clearly somebody was wrong.
I'm very discerning of which analyst reports I write about, and I even treat industry heavyweights like Gartner and IDC with cautious eyes. Bloggers and journalists covering Apple or the mobile industry would do readers a service by balancing analyst reports against others; I pledge to do more of that myself. Many of these so-called analyses shouldn't be reported at all, such as those making bold predictions based on how their service or advertising network is used on mobile devices.
As for Verizon iPhone sales, who knows? Maybe there will be a press release tomorrow or later this week. How long Apple takes to tout early sales, particularly that magic 1 million number, will reveal something important about expectations versus reality.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
U.S. Government looks to speed up its technology adoption

Publié: février 15, 2011, 12:21am CET par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Various executive agencies of the U.S. government have come together in an effort to speed up how the government acquires new technology and solutions, the United States General Services Administration (GSA) announced today.
The GSA, in the simplest terms, is a federal body in charge of all of the material stuff the government uses. This includes everything from land, to cars, to IT technology and solutions, and it is also the government body in charge of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).
Whenever a government agency wants to issue a new contract or proposal to aqcuire goods from a civilian body, it has to make sure the supplier meets the guidelines laid out by FAR.
"The vision for the Federal Acquisition System is to deliver on a timely basis the best value product or service to the customer, while maintaining the public's trust and fulfilling public policy objectives. Participants in the acquisition process should work together as a team and should be empowered to make decisions within their area of responsibility," says the first section of FAR.
FAR was put in place in 1974 as a part of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act of 1974, but thanks to what the Government Accountability Office called "changing security threats, rapidly evolving science and technology, and budget imbalances," the process of FAR-compliant acquisition often proves to be too slow or too difficult for smaller companies.
"We need a tuneup on our system," U.S. General Services Administrator Martha N. Johnson said today. "Right now, we are driving our father's car. It works, but is showing its age. I want a modern, electric car version of the FAR to take us where we need to go reliably and quickly."
Together with NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Office of Management and Budget, the GSA is "tuning up" FAR beginning on March 31.
The group will create action plans in three general areas: team management, case management, and training. All of them will concentrate on the ways the GSA can more quickly and accurately assess the material needs of federal agencies, and fulfill them in a quick, but fair manner.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010