Aug 13, 2012 | Uncategorized
The major torrent site Demonoid looks like it will not be coming back to the internet world. Well at least not in its former glory. About 2 weeks ago the torrent site was ddos and hacked. After getting hammered the site was raised by police. So all of the people who love demonoid had hoped that this site will be back up and running in about a month or so but now it looks like the urls are actually for sale. Now none of these have been sold and I doubt it wil be sold at least not for the foreseeable future depending on what happens with the police investigation. But none the less this is a major blow to one of the biggest torrent sites in the world.
Aug 8, 2012 | Uncategorized
Youtube and Apple have parted ways for now. It seems as though the ios beta 6 does not have the youtube app. It seems that the product has expired on the ios. If you have ios 5 you will not lose this app. However it has been confirmed that Safari will play youtube videos but Google has stated they are working with Apple to get youtube back on the platform. To me I think this is just due to the issues with Apple removing Google Maps and at the last minute we will find a way to get youtube at least back in the app store if not included with the ios 6 package.
Aug 7, 2012 | Uncategorized
Ebay has announced it is starting a service for same day shipping. They are calling it ebay now. This currently is going to be started in San Fransisco and people are being asked to be.in a beta test of the service. Now so far from what I have read the shipper does need to be local and right the beta is set for a 5 dollar same day shipping option. It only works for purchases over $25, but beta testers get $15 off their first eBay Now order plus free shipping on their first three orders before a $5 delivery fee kicks in. You can eBay Now from any store on its Milo platform, the service is open to SF residents M-Sat 9am to 9pm and Sunday 9am-6pm, and deliveries can arrive in as little as an hour but a store must be open at least a half hour after an order is place. Partnered stores include Macy’s, Toys’R’Us, Target, and Best Buy. Those invited will get prioritized for access before general signups. So if this beta works we could see this happening with more and more online shops. We know that Amazon is working on same day shipping. Could this.be where online retail is going?
Aug 2, 2012 | Uncategorized
Facebook last week revealed that it had 955 million monthly active users and around 543 million monthly active mobile users. They even said that around 20% of the latter numbers, around 102 million users actually accessed Facebook in June just on their mobile devices. Facebook also put out an interesting tidbit about fake accounts. They estimate that around 8.7% or roughly 83.09 million accounts are actually fake. This is quite a jump as Facebook said back in March it was around 5-6% were either fake or duplicates. Which would of meant around 42.25-50.70 million users at that time. Now this jump isn?t due to the fact that tons of new fake accounts have popped up but that Facebook is trying to get better at finding this fake accounts. Facebook had this to say on the subject:
We estimate that “duplicate” accounts (an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account) may have represented approximately 4.8 percent of our worldwide MAUs as of June 30, 2012. We also seek to identify “false” accounts, which we divide into two categories: (1) user-misclassified accounts, where users have created personal profiles for a business, organization, or non-human entity such as a pet (such entities are permitted on Facebook using a Page rather than a personal profile under our terms of service); and (2) undesirable accounts, which represent user profiles that we determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming. As of June 30, 2012, we estimate user-misclassified accounts may have represented approximately 2.4 percent of our worldwide MAUs and undesirable accounts may have represented approximately 1.5 percent of our worldwide MAUs.
Aug 1, 2012 | Uncategorized
The war between Apple and Samsung will seem to never ever end. There are tons of court battles between the two. As Apple feels that Samsung has taken liberties with their phone design and basically copied the iPhone and iPad. Well so far the courts agree with Apple and that Samsung has indeed infringed on the rights of Apple and their phone and tablet patents. Well I am sure Apple will be looking closely to the new 11.8 inch tablet that Samsung is developing. They have submitted court documents on a new tablet with a retnia display. What else has a retnia display? Ah you got it the new ipad. So I have no doubt in my mind Apple will be chomping at the bit to sir for this new tablet.
Jul 31, 2012 | Uncategorized
As we all know the Olympics are in full swing and there are a lot of tweeting and facebooking going on well the people London might not want to tweet too much or else it cause some.issues with the TV data transmissions. Particularly on Saturday’s men’s cycling road race commentators were unable to tell viewers how far the leaders were ahead of the chasing pack because data could not get through from the GPS satellite navigation system traveling with the cyclists. So London is asking people to keep the tweeting and such to only must needed tweets. Maybe this is what Romney was talking about when he said London wasn’t ready for the Olympics.
Jul 28, 2012 | Uncategorized
Online retailer Amazon has released its Q2 2012 earnings. Revenue is at $12.83 billion. The company previously had a strong Q1, showing a 34% increase in revenue to $13.18 billion following the holiday season.
The company does have a bothersome statement about its income:
?Net income decreased 96% to $7 million in the second quarter, or $0.01 per diluted share, compared with net income of $191 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, in second quarter 2011. The second quarter 2012 includes $65 million of estimated net loss related to the acquisition and integration of Kiva Systems, Inc.?
Amazon has made some interesting moves lately, that truly rumor and speculation based but the company is said to be working on a 10-inch version of its Kindle Fire Android-based tablet, with as many as ?five or six? different versions of the device. The move would most certainly prove welcome to fans of its streaming video service, which just saw an exclusive deal come to life with Warner Brothers.
There is also the speculation that they are looking into openning up more centers for shipping and could be looking at a possible same day shipping method that if successful in theory could cripple retailers. Looking at Amazon I would not be to concerned with down numbers this Q2. If it continues thru the rest of this year than maybe I would worry.
Jul 27, 2012 | Uncategorized
Everyone can ask microsoft questions about the surface and if they will finally be successful with a mobile device. As we have seen in the past microsoft isn’t the best at developing mobile devices especially on the hardware side. I know I don’t have to say this because everyone should already know what I feel to be one of their biggest failures the Zune. And yes I did own one and I could make the excuse that when I worked in retail we carried them and I received a nice discount on it. Well Microsoft has to send in a report for the securities and exchange commission and within that document we see Microsoft citing some concerns with the Surface tablet.
Microsoft finally conceded something that has been rather obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the personal computer industry and Microsoft?s historical role in it. On page 14 of the document, Microsoft acknowledges that its Surface family of tablet computers could weaken support for Windows among Microsoft?s partners in the PC industry, known as original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs for short. Now that is huge that they are concerned that this tablet could alienate their oem partners. This obviously would point to that risk could be based on the success of the tablet and the inception of more types of surface tablets based on the success of it. Only time will tell but based on the speculation of price point for these tablets I don’t see a strong run on these tablets.
Jul 26, 2012 | Uncategorized
There has been plenty of speculation behind his much the Surface tablet from Microsoft will be. Today the world of Microsoft reporting is going wild with the news from a Swedish website that listed prices for all four coming Surface models, covering both the RT and Pro editions. Above is a screenshot, via WPCentral from a Swedish website lists the 4 models with pricing. So what do you think about the pricing of a tablet being over 1k.
Jul 25, 2012 | Uncategorized
Mountain Lion is here for every Mac user. It is now available to the public and is exclusively available at the Mac App store for $19.99. Now this new OS will have some nice features to it including the improved iCloud integration with support for notes and reminders, iMessage support via the new Messages application, Notification Center, Power Nap updating during sleep, Dictation, enhanced sharing tools, Game Center, improved security with gatekeeper, and more.
