Month: January 2012

So, the rumors last week were wrong!

Barnes & Noble CEO: We’re committed to the Nook

“Although there have been doubts about the Nook (and e-book readers in general) lately, Barnes & Noble isn’t giving up on the brand anytime soon.

CEO William Lynch told CNBC today that Barnes & Noble will continue to reinforce the relationship between the digital Nook e-book brand and its brick-and-mortar stores.

Rebuffing the idea that B&N would be spinning off its Nook unit, instead, Lynch reaffirmed the company’s stance on the future of digital content:

The growth is going to be in digital, hence our investments in digital and how we’ve scaled that business. But the physical book business, by any measure and any projection, will continue to be the largest part of the business, and we’ve been growing share there, and in fact growing the business in absolute terms…That is a very profitable side of the business.

Earlier this week, Barnes & Noble said in a statement that it’s examining how to “unlock” the value of the Nook unit after disappointing sales results–especially for the Nook Simple Touch reader that debuted in May.

In December, Barnes & Noble reported fiscal second-quarter losses of $6.6 million, though there was a silver lining: the recently released Nook Tablet is said to be the fastest selling Nook product in history.”

What do you think about having a login to a site, or application verified by your “@” Twitter ID? Will I eventually just be “@DrBillBailey” everywhere? Hummmm… interesting idea. Twitter is releasing the tools for developers to be able to add Twitter ID verification into apps.

Twitter’s new @handle distribution pilot program

“Today we introduce a new pilot program for distributing Verified Account @handles and public profile metadata to developers, media and content services, and consumer device manufacturers. The Echo Nest, Gracenote, and Rovi are the first partners in this program, which will scale the distribution of Twitter account data for integration in consumer-facing apps. Developers in the Twitter ecosystem can now work with these three partners to integrate Verified Account @handles and Tweets into their music and entertainment services.

The Echo Nest will connect Twitter Verified Accounts to its Rosetta Stone service to give developers a simple way to integrate Tweets from popular recording artists directly into their apps. The Echo Nest’s music intelligence platform powers leading music services and platforms, including Spotify, Nokia, Rdio, MOG, EMI and iHeartRadio.

Gracenote will integrate Twitter Verified Accounts for musicians, actors and other artists into its database of music and video information, which includes metadata for millions of artists, albums and movies. Gracenote’s database powers some of the world’s leading music and video products, including Apple iTunes, HTC smart phones, Ford SYNC and Sony BRAVIA TVs.

Rovi offers digital home entertainment companies an easy way to add Tweets directly from Verified Accounts into their services. Rovi’s database also includes reviews, artist bios and music clips, and is used by manufacturers and services providers.

Partnerships like these give music and entertainment fans the opportunity to interact with Tweets from their favorite artists, directly through the media services they use every day. We expect to add more partnerships to the pilot program, which will extend the Twitter experience to a new set of devices and applications.”

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Yes, you play it. Don’t lie to me! Now 6.5 million of you are after Christmas! Angry Birds is also nearly the first app downloaded on all phones, hand helds, etc! Go Birds!

Some 6.5 Million People Found Angry Birds in Their Stockings

“Buoyed by a flurry of smartphone activations, Rovio said it saw a record 6.5 million Christmas Day downloads for its Angry Birds franchise of games.

That’s nearly the number of total smartphone activations estimated to have happened over Christmas.

“We’re really excited to have such a massive number of new people get acquainted with Angry Birds over the holidays — we have exciting new releases lined up for 2012, and can’t wait to introduce them to the public,” Rovio’s Ville Heijari told AllThingsD.

That total combines downloads for three games — Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio — and includes a mix of paid and free downloads.
The number is up from Christmas 2010, when the company saw two million downloads across iOS and Android.

It was an appy Christmas overall, with Flurry suggesting more than a billion mobile programs were downloaded during the final week of 2011.”

A lot of posts tonight, I know! BUT, I have been totally absorbed this week at work with late night (early morning) Red Hat Enterprise Linux server upgrades. When I got home all week, I just crashed. Today was my first semi-normal day all week (and I still had a server upgrade today… but it was at least during the day!) So… long story short… no time for blogging! So, I “saved it all up” for tonight’s blogging burst! The downside of being a busy systems guy, I guess! But, hopefully, I still uncovered some interesting info for you from the tech news!

Now, on to do the video Netcasts tomorrow morning! For now, to bed!

The notorious group, Anonymous, stole some code from anti-virus and security company Symantec in India… wow!

Symantec says some source code stolen, no customer information exposed

“Symantec confirmed today that a group of Anonymous members based in India obtained source code based on a small amount of code released by the group this morning.

This is the second attack focused on Internet security companies performed by the hacker collective, Anonymous. The group recently infiltrated the servers of security analyst firm Stratfor stealing over 9,000 credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information. At the time Anonymous threatened to use the credit cards to make donations to charities as part of its vigilante appearance. In general, Anonymous doesn’t have a unified agenda, but it seems embarrassing security companies by infiltrating them and stealing credit cards and code is the flavor of the week.

Symantec, which creates anti-virus software for both businesses and consumers, discovered the potential hack on Wednesday when the group posted about its newest trophy on an Internet forum. At the time, Symantec believed only some documentation on source code built in 1999 was compromised. According to Symantec spokesperson Cris Paden, who spoke with VentureBeat over e-mail, the cyber criminals posted a segment of code on the same forum, which led Symantec researchers to confirm the code’s theft. The source code is of two outdated enterprise-grade anti-virus products built five or six years ago. No consumer products have been compromised.”

So, what if Apple hardware was even easier to buy? Closer to the public, broader appeal, more sales, hummmm… might work!

Mini Apple Stores to open inside Target locations?

“In an effort to expand its retail reach, Apple is reportedly planning to open mini Apple Store displays inside select Target locations later this year.

As many as 25 locations in smaller metro areas not large enough for Apple Stores of their own could end up with the in-Target Apple Store set-ups, “according to a source familiar with Apple’s plans,” the website AppleInsider reported Friday.

Officials at Apple weren’t available for comment on the report — the company’s usual practice is to decline to comment on rumors — but the tech giant has taken this type of approach before.

Hundreds of Best Buy locations feature Apple Store displays, with Apple signage and tables that match the look of what is seen in Apple’s retail locations.

At some Best Buy stores, there are even Apple staffers on hand from time to time to explain products to customers and show off iPads, iPhones, iPods, iMacs and MacBook laptops as well as accessories.

Target sells iPods, iPhones and iPads but no Mac computers. That is likely to change with the Apple-Store-within-a-store plan, AppleInsider said.

The site also noted that although there are 1,752 Target locations and 245 Apple Stores in the U.S., there are also more than 600 BestBuy locations with mini Apple Store displays inside.”