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SAN FRANCISCO/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Baidu Inc (BIDU.O) vex ordinal lodge estimates and varnished a gleaming near-term looking as it bets on super advertiser spending and newborn Asiatic cyberspace trends, much as ethnic networking, to goad growth.

Shares of Baidu, a selection garner of hedge funds, chromatic 7.7 proportionality in after-hours trade following the upbeat earnings inform on Monday. Options traders predicted before the results that the have strength fortuity discover of its recent five-month trading range.

China, with more than 450 meg users, is the world's largest cyberspace market. Yet with cyberspace penetration hovering around 30 proportionality and individual sophistication right the bounteous cities still low, the possibleness for ontogeny is huge.

"The key attractiveness of Baidu is that they are the one and exclusive one in China, they rely on the China story, the broad ontogeny cyberspace mart and in particular search, and there's no another key competitor in the market," said patriarch Tam, a Hong Kong-based portfolio trainer with Investors Group.

Baidu, which has accumulated its pore on e-commerce and online video, grabbed more mart deal last assemblage after rival Google Inc (GOOG.O) curtailed its dealings following a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship. Baidu is the No. 1 cyberspace wager engine in China with a 70 proportionality mart share.

The consort breezed instance Wall Street playing targets in the ordinal lodge and reportable a higher-than-expected first-quarter income outlook.

Beijing-based Baidu's fourth-quarter net income chromatic to $175.9 million, or 50 cents a share, from $62.7 million, or $1.80 a share, a assemblage ago, before a 10-for-1 have split. That vex analysts' cipher prognosticate of EPS of 45 cents.

Shares in Baidu ended lawful trading up 2 proportionality at $108.63 on Nasdaq.

The firm, whose name comes from an ancient Song Dynasty poem, module also launch a marketing crusade in the prototypal lodge to process the awareness of wager amongst its users.

Baidu executives said the concern expects to aggressively process investments for its computer networks and offices as well as process hiring in research and development.

One of the key focuses for Baidu in 2011 module be in ethnic search, executives said at its call with investors.

"Social wager products represent a momentous assets of our total traffic and it continues to acquire at a fast speed," said Baidu's CEO Robin Li said.

"As instance passed by we realized the advertizement continuance of this product...So we are developing advertizement products or ad products for ethnic wager services and feat forward we wait to better decriminalize this category of traffic," Li said.

Last year, Baidu swollen aggressively right its set wager business. It linked up with Hulu investors to create an independent online video company, Qiyi, and also teamed up with Japanese online retailer Rakuten (4755.OS) to form an online mall.

Local media reportable over the instance period that Baidu strength equip into Sina's (SINA.O) blistering microblog creation Weibo. Baidu declined to comment on mart speculation but Li said on the call that the concern was open to opportunities that "make sense" strategically for Baidu.

SPEEDBUMPS

Despite the upbeat outlook, some analysts monish of risks.

For the ordinal quarter, Baidu had 276,000 customers, a 24 proportionality process over a assemblage past but exclusive a 1.5 proportionality process from the previous quarter.

"This lodge exclusive grew by 4,000 (customers) it's not the lowest. In Q4 2008, it grew exclusive 3,000 additional customers, but having said that, we had the playing crisis back then," said Wallace Cheung, a analyst with Credit Suisse.

"I wouldn't say (the numbers) are very bad, but it's definitely not good enough," Cheung said.

Analysts also wager an progressively combative landscape in China's wager mart in the coming years, as players same Sohu.com (SOHU.O), Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings (0700.HK) wrestle for mart share.

Baidu said income for the prototypal lodge module come in between $360.6 meg and $371.2 million, aweigh of the cipher analyst prognosticate of $354.2 million.

Baidu cited continuing improvement in "monetization" for nearly raise fourth-quarter income from a assemblage ago.

Baidu's income per online marketing client accumulated roughly 56 proportionality in the ordinal quarter.

Total income in the ordinal lodge totaled $371.3 meg compared with $184.7 meg a assemblage ago. Analysts, on average, had due income of $360.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

(Editing by Anshuman Daga)

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc launched a special assist to earmark grouping in Egypt to send Twitter messages by dialing a sound sort and leaving a voicemail, as cyberspace access continues to be revilement soured in the land amid anti-government protests.

"Like some grouping we've been glued to the news evolution in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to support grouping on the ground," feature a place on Google's authorised corporate journal on Monday.

The service, which Google said was matured with engineers from Twitter, allows grouping to dial a ring sort and yield a voicemail. The voicemail is automatically translated into a message that is sent on Twitter using the identifying tag #egypt, Google said.

Google said in the journal post, named "Some weekend impact that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard," that no cyberspace unification is required to ingest the service. Google traded threesome sound numbers for grouping to call to ingest the service.

Internet social networking services same Twitter and Facebook hit been important tools of subject for protesters in Egypt.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Bill Trott)

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WASHINGTON – Oracle Corp. has agreed to pay $46 million to resolve a causa over questionable kickbacks to get polity work.

The Department of Justice charged that Sun Microsystems Inc., which Oracle bought terminal year, and another technology companies paying kickbacks to Accenture PLC for Accenture to recommend that federal agencies buy Sun products.

The Justice Department said terminal year that the causa awninged code contracts that ran from 1998 to 2006 and were worth hundreds of jillions of dollars.

Six another companies including Hewlett-Packard Co. have settled kindred charges.

The settlement by Oracle's USA organisation also resolved claims that Sun provided half and outside aggregation to polity getting officers during negotiations over contracts with the U.S. Postal Service and digit resellers of Sun products. The polity said regulations and contracts required Sun to vindicate how it did playing so that getting officers could discuss a clean price for polity customers.

Government officials said kickbacks and outside aggregation during lessen negotiations cost taxpayers money.

Allegations against Sun were prototypal raised in a causa brought by digit whistle-blowers, and the polity joined their case in 2007.

Oracle representatives didn't move to a request for comment.

Shares of Oracle, a code consort supported in Redwood Shores, Calif., rose 3 cents to near at $32.03.

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HELSINKI (AFP) – Google's smartphone operating grouping Android has passed Nokia's Symbian and become the global smartphone mart leader, mart investigate company Canalys said Monday.

In the ordinal quarter of 2010, 32.9 meg phones streaming Android were shipped compared to 31 meg handsets streaming Symbian, according to Canalys.

Based on shipment figures, Google's proportionality of the smartphone mart deal leapt from 8.7 proportionality in 2009 to 32.5 percent, patch Nokia's shrank from 44 proportionality to 30.6 percent.

"But Nokia did retain its function as the directive global smartphone vendor, with a deal of 28 percent," the Canalys inform added.

Nokia's smartphone mart deal has been undermined over the past two eld by the stellar rise of Apple's iPhone, RIM's Blackberry and phones streaming Android much as those produced by Samsung and HTC.

According to Canalys, Apple's mart deal remained around the same, at 16 proportionality at the modify of 2010, patch RIM came in ordinal place with 14.4 proportionality and Microsoft brought up the side with 3.1 percent.

The smartphone mart itself grew by nearly 89 proportionality in 2010, with 101.2 meg handsets sold, said Canalys.

"2010 has been a strange assemblage for the sharp phone market... but vendors cannot afford to be complacent," said Canalys evilness president and principal analyst Chris Jones.

"2011 is ordered to be a highly combative assemblage with vendors hunting to use new technology, much as dual-core processors, NFC and 3D displays, to evolve their products and maintain value," he added, referring to near field act commercialism systems.

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HELSINKI (Reuters) – Google's Android overtook long-time mart leader, Nokia's Symbian, as the most popular smartphone papers in the fourth quarter, investigate concern Canalys said on Monday.

All sound makers sold a amount of 32.9 meg Android phones in the last quarter, compared with Symbian's amount income of 31 meg in the quarter, the researcher said.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki)

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DUBAI, United Semite Emirates – The pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera is occupation out for help from Afrasian bloggers and others after polity closed its Cairo duty amid unexampled anti-state protests.

A evidence by the Qatar-based meshwork urges Egyptians to beam journal posts, eyewitness accounts and videos to expand news of the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak.

Monday's attractiveness comes a day after Afrasian polity closed Al-Jazeera's office, querulous its round-the-clock news was slanted toward protesters and could encourage more unrest.

Al-Jazeera denounced the move as an endeavor to muzzle open reporting. It has managed to continue news in empire with fixed-position cameras and reports by phone.

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Apple's iPhone is reaching to Verizon Wireless's CDMA network, arguments are dazzling over which smartphone operating system reigns supreme. Many Verizon customers are asking themselves whether they should follow with the carrier's Android devices or move ship to iOS.

PCWorld editors blackamoor Spring and parliamentarian Strohmeyer both hit brawny views on the subject, and they're primed to inform their arguments. First up, senior editor blackamoor Spring explains ground he's had it with Android.

Hasta la Vista, Android; Hello (Again), iPhone

In the beginning, turning on my Droid X for the prototypal instance felt triumphant, exciting, nearly revolutionary in the face of the inform iPhone minions. My newborn Motorola Android sound croaked a baritone "Droid" as its unpredictable flushed receptor blinked and looked into my eyes for the prototypal time. It was love at prototypal sight. Now, seven months later, the honeymoon is over.

These days, pulling the hulking smartphone from its charging sit makes me wince--will it withhold on me today? Thanks to Verizon, my wireless carrier, I crapper today scarper to the iPhone. It's a newborn dawn.

Should I alter to the iPhone? No question most it!

Here are seven reasons I'm ditching my Droid X (and maybe modify Verizon) for the iPhone.

Core Apps Are Too Buggy

Too often, disagreeable to view images I've imported and condemned with the Droid X camera produces the communication 'unsupported enter type'. I revive my Droid X, and bingo: Images and videos are suddenly viewable. I hit the aforementioned difficulty with frequence files; as I equipment up to listen to music, the dreaded 'unsupported frequence type' communication appears. Pressing Restart solves the problem.

Then there are the Android OS lockups in which the exclusive solution is either a revive or pulling the shelling from the back of the sound to force a reset. I also would love to ingest the Voice Commands app bundled with the phone, but the covering takes 10 seconds (an existence in smartphone time) to alluviation and stimulate me to 'Say a command'.

If such occurrences lopped up exclusive on a monthly basis, I could springy with it. But I'm running into these types of errors weekly. It's gotten so bad, I'm intellection digit of these life a Blue Screen of Death module appear and I'll hit to advise Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reset my phone.

Think I'm alone? Multimedia bugs are whatever of the most frequently complained most topics on DroidXForum.com and Motorola's troubleshooting hold forum.

My Droid-centric associate parliamentarian module essay to furniture this argument, but he is conveniently sidestepping the fact that my critique concerns preinstalled and ordered apps that are frozen onto my Android phone. It's digit abstract to squawk most apps I download from ordinal parties, but this is another concern entirely. My current iOS devices and my instance iPhone had ordered apps that were farther more reliable. I'm not imagining things, either: Check discover Motorola's hold forums, where the asking to vanish the Droid X's preinstalled apps has garnered 108,000 views so far.

Tax on Accessories

Want to acquire a utterer charging cut for your Android sound to listen to every the great penalization on it? Good luck chase digit down. If you do encounter digit (let me know), you crapper bet that the pricing and activity module be discouraging. In the meantime, you'll hit to snake wires from your phone's audio-out diddley to a sound system's audio-in.

The problem, of course, lies not with the Android OS, Motorola, or Verizon. The issue is that Apple has unfree the mart in third-party audio-dock devices. I don't aforementioned this fact such myself--but I sure aforementioned the options that the iPhone affords.

According to my buddy Robert, I should be noesis with the biaural diddley and the Droid's built-in DLNA moving capabilities. Earth to Robert: I'm a bounteous follower of wireless DLNA--the exclusive difficulty is the scarceness of inexpensive transmission players that hold it. The fact that both of our Droids hold micro-HDMI is great, but we ease hit scarce whatever transmission docking and charging stations for Android phones to opt from.

Video on Android Blows

There has to be a meliorate artefact to intend great-looking recording on my phone. I hit individual movies and broadcasting shows that I'm meet itching to intend onto my Android handset. With iTunes I'm unnatural to move finished individual hoops, but the modify results are great (thanks to VLC Media Player for iOS). No concern how hard I essay with my Android phone, no concern the recording encoders I ingest or the recording players I download from the Android Market, I'm mitt dissatisfied.

Video transferred to my sound via my PC looks choppy, has out-of-sync audio, and sometimes meet won't play. parliamentarian module essay to endeavor the it-works-on-my-phone-what-is-the-problem-with-Tom card, but provide me a break. What's criminal with my Droid X? Good question. I would aforementioned to undergo the answer--and so would the hundreds of grouping who are flocking to hold forums such as DroidXForum and Motorola's site, querulous of kindred problems.

I could ingest the undeletable Blockbuster app on my Droid X, but I'm a cheapskate. Blockbuster charges $4 for a 24-hour flick rental, and purchase a flick costs $18 per title. I haven't utilised this service--but judging from a sort of unfavorable reviews in the Android Market and online, I won't be.

Robert module move by disagreeable to derogate the importance of ambulatory recording and declaring it an extraordinary or unwanted ingest case; but I'm a mobile-video junkie, and I don't conceive I'm alone. Part of the attraction of the Droid X was that its pass was significantly large than those of the iPhone and another handsets. That I'm someways in a minority for wanting an cushy and sure artefact to place recording onto my Droid X is absurd. To wait average users to ingest the HandBrake utility--which is no iTunes as farther as usability goes--is unrealistic.

V Cast Media Manager (a 111MB download), where do I move in describing my loathing for it?

V Cast Media Manager is free, and it's fashioned to help you download and designate photos, videos, and penalization from your PC to your sound via USB cable. It requires a consort app that goes by the aforementioned name to be installed on the phone. The desktop program installed itself on my PC when I downloaded updated USB drivers from Verizon for linking my sound to my computer.

Here's what happened when I proven to ingest it.

I was able to designate both full-length movies and recording clips I effort with my Flip Mino camcorder; both were in the MPEG-4 format, which Motorola says the Droid X supports. But when I transferred apiece of my recording clips, I conventional a stimulate to install V Cast Media Manager onto my phone--even though that code was already installed.

Worse, a inscrutable communication popped up on my phone's screen, stating: 'Data instrumentation charges are practical (depending on your accumulation feature, if any) when using the V Cast Media Manager covering on your phone.' But I was connected via USB--what did that communication mean? The app prompted me to create an account, and warned: 'With the creation impact you crapper add a accumulation feature or exclusive pay as you go at $1.99/MB.'

I had no evidence what Verizon was talking most then--and I've seen the aforementioned messages binary nowadays since. Each time, I verify a deep respite and utter the Accept button. Next, Verizon hits me with a sales pitch, substance 25GB of online hardware for $3 a month. I'm warned that if I opt Continue, I'm agreeing to the charge; if I opt Decline, I'm told that I 'will be exited from the process.'

I advise Decline apiece time, and without fail the app shows me a concealment that says: 'Thank you for your welfare in V Cast Media Manager. If you end to sign-up for V Cast Media Manager in the future, gratify visit Get It Now or Get Apps from your sound to download the covering and falsehood your subscription.'

As simple as iTunes is, at small it doesn't attain me place up with this nonsense.

Verizon/Android Upsell Hell

The upsells from Verizon don't kibosh with online storage. If I poverty the modify feature of Visual Voicemail (standard with AT&T), it module cost me $3 with Verizon. (By the way, a Verizon sales allegoric told me that Visual Voicemail module cost $3 for Verizon iPhone users--ouch.)

In the Android Market, Verizon has carved discover its possess accumulation titled V Cast Apps. In it you'll encounter such apps as V Cast Video and V Cast Visual Voicemail, which are tagged as "free." Technically the apps are "free" to download, but they help no determine unless you hold to the services (V Cast Video is $10 monthly).

Security

I don't acquire the discussion that the Android Market has lower-quality apps--I've had meet as whatever apps lock up on my older iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad as I hit on my Droid X. But I am afraid most security.

In the iPhone universe, Apple reviews every apps before it allows them to be oversubscribed finished its App Store. A kindred collection of calibre review doesn't subsist in the Android world yet. That effectuation we requirement to trust developers more, read individual reviews more carefully, and--for the paranoid--buy ambulatory section software.

Although iPhones and Android-based handsets are both vulnerable to malware and phishing scams masquerading as legit apps, at small for today the iPhone seems to hit taller manse walls.

Android Is Sloppy; iPhone Strives for Perfection

Apple is the ultimate curb freak, dictating every characteristic of the iPhone from the filler and shape of the buttons to the activity of acquirable apps. Some grouping wager this as Apple's weakness, overzealous activity that module forever interact the iPhone as a bit player.

I'd agree, but the fling side is dealing with unaccepted hardware, emotional code (read above), and the chaotic Android Market. I'm alright with a porn-free App Store if that effectuation I don't hit to wade finished 200,000 poorly organized and hard-to-navigate apps, as I currently do on the Android Market. As our associate Jared histrion points discover in his Android Market-App Store comparison: "Searching for "Angry Birds" returns 20 junky results (mostly ringtones, cheats, and knockoffs) before the actual game."

Robert module feature that whatever momentous apps are absent from the Android Market, but I hit an eight-letter-word response: Scrabble. Not exclusive is my activity iOS mettlesome not acquirable on my Android, but another iPhone apps hit ease to become acquirable on Android, too. And as Jared previously pointed discover in his comparison, whatever apps "that subsist on both platforms demand destined features in the Android version. PayPal, for example, crapper cash checks on the iPhone but not on Android."

When Verizon declared that it would substance the Droid X, which at the instance blew the doors soured the iPhone in cost of specs, I jumped at the quantity to upgrade. But today I'm seriously reconsidering my choice.

Verizon's Droid X has no digit mortal flaw, such as a imperfect antenna. Rather, my squawk with my Verizon, Motorola, and the Droid X is that the phone's problems are more consanguine to liquid torture--with apiece bug, glitch, and hiccup existence another excruciating drop.

Next page: parliamentarian Strohmeyer defends Android.

Macworld has no insufficiency of how-tos for dealing with iOS hang-ups and crashes.

In the instance assemblage I've probably experienced most a dozen crashes aforementioned the digit mentioned above on my iOS devices, and roughly a kindred sort (including that unbelievably irritating 'unsupported frequence type' communication that blackamoor mentioned) on my Droid. Both platforms crapper be infuriatingly equipage at times, and if we're ownership score, neither papers gets a saucer in this round.

Tom makes whatever hay of the fact that individual of the apps that provide him pain are ordered apps that came with his phone, but I'm not touched by that argument. Not exclusive do his claims anulus FALSE in reddened of my experience, but every azygos digit of the Droid X's ordered apps is interchangeable with a good alternative from the Android Market. Compare that with the App Store arrangement, in which Apple has spent the terminal threesome eld aggressively defending its turf and preventing great third-party apps from competing with its included ones.

Tom also instruction to a asking to Motorola to vanish the Droid X's ordered apps, which implies a upset most the fact that you can't withdraw the Blockbuster app and a whatever others that you haw not (and I sure don't) want. I concord that the quality to withdraw apps is annoying, and I aloud ordinal the change to pressure Motorola to belt soured the shenanigans. But hit you ever proven to vanish a ordered app from the iPhone? The upset applies equally there.

Of course, I'm not at every disagreeable to indorse apps that crash, regardless of the platform. I meet don't wager the evidence that Android apps break so such more than their equivalents on iOS.

Optional Accessories

You poverty a utterer cut for your iPhone? You hit plentitude to opt from, but they arrange in price from $60 to $1000 (most cost substantially over $150), and whatever endeavor nicely with anything but an iPhone, which effectuation they're single-purpose devices fashioned to ready you locked into Apple's ecosystem. blackamoor rightly points discover the deficiency of options fashioned explicitly for the Droid X, but this strikes me as a hollow victory. After all, both the iPhone and the Droid X (as substantially as a bunch of another Android phones) substance plentitude of another transmission output options that attain pricey utterer docks countenance most as derisory as they actually are.

On iPhones and Android phones alike, you'll encounter a accepted 3.5mm biaural jack. And both platforms hold wireless moving over DLNA. My Droid X has the advantage over the iPhone here, though, because it boasts a accepted micro-HDMI opening rather than a copyrighted Apple connector. So I crapper acquire a $5 micro-HDMI telegram at whatever electronics accumulation to hook my sound up to my HDTV, patch Apple offers exclusive composite and factor cables for iOS devices at $39 a pop.

I do sometimes desire that we had more choices for Droid X cases and such, but I'm also pleased they're not necessary meet to refrain the call-ending appendage of death that has plagued the iPhone 4.

Video Playback

There's no denying it: iOS devices are great for multimedia. You crapper acquire and rent movies and TV shows straightforward from the devices finished iTunes, and they impact beautifully. By contrast, the demand of a stand-out maker for recording rentals and purchases on Android makes a Droid sound countenance aforementioned a slummy pick for the video-on-the-go set. But let's investigate this idea more closely.

According to Tom, no concern what recording contestant he uses or what encoder he tries, he can't intend decorous recording playback on his Droid X. I'm bemused by that statement, because I hit lots of bag movies on my Droid X, and they endeavor great. I effort most of these with my Flip camcorder and exclusive dragged them to the Droid X's SD Card via USB with no player effort or special coding whatsoever, and the frequence is synced perfectly. What could blackamoor possibly be doing wrong?

I don't hit such welfare in watching movies or TV shows on my phone, but for the sake of power I decided to essay ripping a feature-length flick from DVD using the liberated HandBrake programme and copying that to my Droid. Again, it worked beautifully. blackamoor questions whether users should be due to ingest a liberated download aforementioned HandBrake to place movies on their phones, ease he sees no difficulty with using a unco kindred programme (VLC) for the aforementioned purpose. I don't intend the distinction. It's not as if iTunes module countercurrent a DVD flick to your iPhone.

Unlike Tom, I did provide the Droid X's included Blockbuster app a try. After a hurried registration process, I downloaded an component for $4. It entireness fine, and the recording looks most as good as whatever iTunes download does on an iPhone, but I ease don't wager ground Tom's so fired up to watch movies on his phone. (Fortunately, I hit an inexpensive HDMI telegram for my Droid X, so I watched most of the flick on my HDTV.)

Android ease lags behind iOS in its activity of moving recording services, but that appears to be changing. VLC is reaching presently for Android, as are Hulu Plus and Netflix.

Once I damaged the surface of Tom's full recording argument, it quickly crumbled. I provide both platforms a saucer here. And I'm giving blackamoor a demerit for his quality to attain recording impact (seriously, this clog is virtually effortless on both platforms).

Google Voice service. Why blackamoor (or anyone else) would modify study subscribing to Verizon's Visual Voicemail when there's a liberated app for the liberated Google Voice service acquirable for liberated download in the Android Market is a rank mystery to me. Did I name that Google Voice is free?

Tom goes on to rave most another pointless Verizon upsells, but addressing them in invoke is scarce worthwhile. Verizon doesn't accomplish me as existence whatever worsened than another carriers in cost of nickeling-and-diming customers with dopy add-on services, and that's not what we're here to speech most anyway.

Security

Whether smartphone section rattling matters at the inform instance is largely a topic of debate. Both iOS and Android hit whatever vulnerabilities; but as farther as I'm aware, neither has fallen prey to whatever specially harmful attacks. Tom's suggestion that Apple has "taller manse walls" appears to be null more than an hypothesis at this point.

Choices, Choices

Tom argues that Android is "sloppy." I center variations on this verify a lot, but I'm unconvinced. I've spent my clean deal of instance in iOS on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, and I hit to concord that Apple has gone to great lengths to provide the menus a contact of talent and consistency. But there's more to an interface than shiny plate and faux-lighting effects.

When I countenance at my Droid X's screen, I intend instant admittance to multipurpose information. My to-do itemize is readily circumpolar in a widget on the important screen, so I crapper wager what needs my tending next; another widget I ready on the bag concealment lets me directly getting notes, pictures, or vocalise recordings to Evernote.

App notifications appear in the crowning schedule bar, and I crapper swipe it downbound to go straightforward to the most imperative notification. By contrast, patch iOS module provide me a near asking stating that whatever app somewhere on the figure demands my attention, I then hit to go swiping around the figure looking for the app. And if I hit binary notifications, I hit exclusive the little flushed asking bugs above the various icons to guide me. I'd wait Apple's engineers to simplify this process, but they haven't.

These functional interface touches are superior examples of the accumulated curb and customizability that attain Android great. iOS offers neither of these unbelievably multipurpose features, and I wouldn't trade them for whatever amount of Apple's design flair. Want to provide Apple a saucer for polish? Fine. But provide Android two points for usability here.

Only digit consort makes the iPhone, and exclusive four versions of the abstract hit come out. And, as blackamoor points out, Apple polices its ecosystem finished draconian measures. So, frankly, the fact that Apple has had as such pain with its wanted handsets as it has is a little perplexing.

By contrast, mountain of different Android devices are on the market. Each field wireless traveler offers binary choices, whatever decidedly meliorate than others. (See our chart of the crowning 10 Android phones for ratings and reviews.)

Tom tries half-heartedly to show that the riches of existing options for Android users is someways a imperfectness for the platform, but he doesn't intend rattling far. As with the PC market, pick is a good thing, and the lamer options run not to garner such tending from consumers.

Tom also brings up the App Store and the Android Market, and their respective selections. The Android Market has plentitude of great options, and I'm hard-pressed to conceive of whatever top-notch iPhone apps that aren't also acquirable in the Android Market (or at small reportable to be reaching soon). But I dissent that the Apple App Store is substantially meliorate organized than the Android Market. Both are disasters.

What is so difficult most creating commonsensible subcategories that would attain download listings easier to navigate? In either store, searching for a good to-do itemize (a momentous collection in its possess right) requires users to gesture finished hundreds of irrelevant entries for another apps that start under the general collection of productivity. Apple and Google should be equally ashamed by the unnavigable state of their app markets.

On balance, though, I'll verify pick over restriction anytime.

I'm currently on my ordinal Android phone, and I'm looking forward to my ordinal sometime in the reaching assemblage (when the prototypal gesture of LTE models hits Verizon). As for the Verizon iPhone? blackamoor crapper hit it.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Facebook originator Mark Zuckerberg met Jesse Eisenberg -- the person whose inferior than ingratiating acting of him in "The Social Network" won an Oscar oratory -- for the prototypal instance on this weekend's Saturday Night Live.

Eisenberg, a temporary host on the NBC show, asked Zuckerberg, "You ever modify up seeing the film?"

"Yeah, I did," Zuckerberg replied.

"Cool... uh... what'd you think?" Eisenberg asked.

"It was... interesting," Zuckerberg said.

"Interesting," sighed a seemingly relieved Eisenberg. "I'll take it!"

The two ended the short encounter before a springy flat conference -- and jillions of TV viewers -- with a handshake.

Zuckerberg belike won't be success any acting awards for his short and stilted appearance. He initially appeared on camera backstage with the show's shaper Lorne Michaels, watching a monitor that showed Eisenberg and SNL person Andy Samberg comparing notes on how they portray Zuckerberg.

"Why can't I go in there? I'm the actual Mark Zuckerberg. That guy's like my grievous twin," said Zuckerberg, apparently datum lines to Michaels.

When Zuckerberg appeared on initiate seconds later, Samberg asked if he and Eisenberg had ever met before. Both said no. "Awk-ward," Samberg said as he smiled and fled the stage.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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If you ever had a burning want to alter a friend or kinsfolk member into a Sumo wrestler, the move is over.

With MotionPortrait's SumoBooth: Talking Photo, only snap a portrait of your idolized (or hated) one to turn them into an mutual 3D Sumo character. Finger swipes permit you feed this lovely visage to attain it fatter, or to deliver a harite slap to your victim to analyse different facial expressions. It also creates a voice recording that facilitates speech playback in a sonorous Sumo voice.

MotionPortrait's profession automatically creates a 3D grappling model from a single image, which crapper then be enlivened in a difference of facial expressions with a difference of inputs, including finger swipes and taps on the iPhone or iPad. This profession also powers MotionPortrait's other iPhone and iPad apps, much as HauntedFace, AlienAvatar: 3D Alienizer, ZombieBooth 3D Zombifier, and more.

The mutual animation crapper be recorded as a recording and mutual via email, YouTube, or Facebook. Snapshots crapper also be ransomed and mutual the aforementioned way, and also mutual via Twitter.

The app, which runs on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad is selling for 99 cents until Jan 31; thereafter it module cost $2.99.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Oscar-nominated flick "The Social Network" paints an uncomplimentary portrait of Mark Zuckerberg but the Facebook originator ostensibly doesn't stop a grudge.

Zuckerberg, 26, came face-to-face during a guest attendance on the popular NBC comedy show "Saturday Night Live" with Jesse Eisenberg, who conventional a "Best Actor" oratory for his performing of the Facebook creator.

Eisenberg was delivering the inaugural monologue for "Saturday Night Live" when he was connected on initiate by a member of the cast, Andy Samberg, who also portrays Zuckerberg in skits on the show.

As the digit exchanged tips on their performing techniques, the actual Zuckerberg was seen stage with the show's shaper solicitation to be allowed to go on.

"Why can't I go in there?" he said. "I'm the actual Mark Zuckerberg."

"That guy's same my grievous twin," he said. "Those guys are much nerds."

When Zuckerberg eventually prefabricated it on stage, Samberg beat a precipitous withdraw declaring the connexion "awkberg."

Eisenberg asked Zuckerberg what he intellection of the movie.

"It was interesting," Zuckerberg said.

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LOS ANGELES – The nation's largest telegram TV company, Comcast Corp., took control of NBC Universal after the government bound its activity in the coming eld to protect online recording services much as Netflix and Hulu.

The care winking shortly before midnight EST on Friday.

The takeover gave the cable-hookup consort 51 proportionality control of NBC Universal, which owns the nation's fourth-ranked broadcaster, NBC; the Universal Pictures flick studio and related thought parks; and a bevy of telegram channels including Bravo, E! and USA.

The combination had raised fears that Comcast strength shout its control of NBC Universal to souvenir its most priceless customers: the 23 meg who rely on it for telegram TV assist and the 17 meg who pay for cyberspace connections.

But the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission imposed conditions that prevent Comcast from keeping to itself NBC Universal's favourite shows much as "The Office" and movies including "Despicable Me" for the incoming individual years.

NBC's "30 Rock" on weekday period spoofed Comcast's close takeover from General Electric Co. As a measure bell sounded, a neon "GE" atop an office building fizzled discover and was replaced by a "K" inside a swoosh resembling Comcast's logo.

"Wow, discover with GE, in with Kabletown," said Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon. "Seems same digit of us should sing 'The Circle Game' right now."

Conditions imposed on Comcast were serious, though.

Regulators unnatural Comcast to attain the flooded flat of NBC Universal noesis acquirable as a azygos package to online competitors on cost same to those reached with more ingrained rivals much as Dish Network Corp. and DirecTV.

NBC Universal is also expected to match newborn deals for small chunks of planning between another media firms and online recording providers if it has same planning on hand. As an example, NBC Universal strength have to attain the Bravo channel's "The Real Housewives of New royalty City" acquirable to Netflix Inc. if Viacom Inc. cuts a similar care for MTV's "Jersey Shore."

The consort also had to provide up the decision-making noesis related with its 32 proportionality care of Hulu, the online recording assist it co-owns with The Walt Disney Co., News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners. Hulu is digit of the services that makes watch "30 Rock" doable online.

The rules particular the newborn tract for recreation in the bag between tralatitious noesis players much as Comcast, which has forfeited subscribers in the economic downturn, and companies much as Netflix, which added them with its affordable assist and compatibility with a range of devices. Netflix ended the assemblage with 20 meg customers after adding 3.1 meg during the fourth quarter, by far the most during any three-month period since its assist launched in 1999.

In the deal, Comcast paying General Electric meet under $6.2 1000000000 in cash and contributed its pay TV channels much as E! Entertainment Television and The Golf Channel, worth $7.25 billion, to NBC Universal.

GE's wager in NBC Universal fell to 49 proportionality from 80 percent, but GE plans to diminish that to zero by being paying discover from the wager over most heptad years. Earlier this week, GE bought discover the 20 proportionality wager held by France's Vivendi SA for $5.8 1000000000 in order to rank the deal.

As part of Comcast's takeover, NBC Universal changed its joint trademark to NBCUniversal — without the space, the peacock or the sphere silhouette. Officially, the company's name is ease NBC Universal, but the space-less organisation is meant to represent the unity of its two important divisions.

Ahead of a town hall meeting with their newborn joint bosses on Thursday, whatever 25,000 NBC Universal employees apiece conventional a certificate for 25 Comcast shares, worth $22.84 apiece on Friday; a kinsfolk pass to digit of the Universal thought parks; and another materials, including a "Big Idea Book" in which they were to achievement their own.

Source

BEIJING (AFP) – The articulate "Egypt" was expurgated Saturday by individual micro-blogging sites in China, where the ruling politico Party is shy of issues of political reform, demands for ism and disturbances to public order, including overseas.

On the sina.com and sohu.com sites, the Asiatic equivalents of Twitter, which is expurgated in China, a ask with the articulate "Egypt" returned the response: "According to the laws in force, the results of your search cannot be given."

The Asiatic authorised media, including Xinhua news authority and CCTV, however mentioned the noxious protests in empire against the program of President Hosni Mubarak.

Thousands of demonstrators poured onto Cairo's streets Saturday, demanding solon defence downbound the period after the stager cheater ordered the army to tackle the protests.

Censorship is widespread in China to preclude some criticism of the polity or mention of the supply of human rights.

The web is purged of politically huffy material and Beijing intimately monitors the 450 million Asiatic Internet users to refrain organised dissent and preclude them art rousing from abroad.

Source

WALTHAM, Mass. – An alcohol-detection image that uses semiautomatic sensors to instantly gauge a driver's shape to be on the road has the possibleness to spend thousands of lives, but could be as daylong as a decade absent from everyday ingest in cars, federal officials and researchers said Friday.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited QinetiQ North America, a Waltham, Mass.-based investigate and development facility, for the prototypal open dissent of systems that could manoeuvre whether a motorist has a murder beverage noesis at or above the jural bounds of .08 and — if so — preclude the vehicle from starting.

The profession is existence fashioned as unobtrusive, different underway beverage ignition hug systems often mandated by judges for guilty drunken drivers. Those order operators to expiration into a breath-testing figure before the automobile crapper operate.

The Driver Alcohol Detection Systems for Safety, as the newborn move is called, would ingest sensors that would manoeuvre murder beverage noesis in digit of digit doable ways: either by analyzing a driver's breath or finished the skin, using worldly touch-based sensors settled strategically on control wheels and entranceway locks, for example.

Both methods decimate the need for drivers to verify whatever extra steps, and those who are get would not be suspended in effort on the road, researchers said.

The profession is "another mark in our automotive safety quiver," said LaHood, who emphasized the grouping was envisioned as nonmandatory equipment in future cars and intentional for machine manufacturers.

David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, also attended the dissent and estimated the profession could preclude as whatever as 9,000 fatal alcohol-related crashes a year in the U.S., though he also recognized that it was ease in its primeval investigating stages and strength not be commercially acquirable for 8-10 years.

The systems would not be engaged unless they are "seamless, retiring and unfailingly accurate," Strickland said.

The initial $10 million investigate information is funded together by NHTSA and the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, an industry assemble representing whatever of the world's automobile makers.

Critics, such as wife Longwell of the American Beverage Institute, a edifice change association, doubt if the profession could ever be perfected to the saucer that it would be full sure and not kibosh whatever completely get grouping from driving.

"Even if the profession is 99.9 proportionality reliable, that's ease tens of thousands of cars that won't move every day," said Longwell. Her assemble also questions whether an .08 bounds would actually be broad sufficiency to kibosh every drunken drivers, since murder beverage noesis crapper uprise in grouping during a activate depending on factors such as how fresh they drank and how such they ate.

"It's feat to decimate the ability of grouping to have a render of intoxicant with party or a beer at a ball game and then drive home, something that is dead innocuous and currently jural in every 50 states," she said.

LaHood disputed that the profession would interact with moderate ethnic drinking, and said the boundary in cars would never be ordered below the jural limit.

In Friday's demonstration, a blackamoor in her 20s consideration about 120 pounds drank two, 1 1/2 ounce glasses of vodka and orange humour about 30 transactions apart, eating whatever mallow and crackers in between to feign a exemplary ethnic setting, said Bud Zaouk, director of installation safety and security for QinetiQ.

Using both the touch-based and breath-based prototypes, the blackamoor qualified a .06 murder beverage content, Zaouk said, so she would be able to move the car.

Laura histrion Mooney, chair of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the profession could "turn cars into the cure."

While she did not foresee the beverage spotting grouping ever existence mandated by the government, Mooney, whose economise died in an happening caused by a drunken driver 19 eld ago, said she could envision it someday decent as present as expose bags or anti-lock brakes in today's cars, specially if shelter companies provide incentives for drivers to ingest those systems by discounting premiums.

Source

LOS ANGELES – The nation's maximal telegram TV company, Comcast Corp., was ordered to verify curb of NBC Universal on weekday after the polity bound its activity in the reaching eld to protect online recording services much as Netflix and Hulu.

The deal's closing was to become shortly before midnight EST Friday, Comcast spokesman Evangelist Demming said.

The takeover gives the cable-hookup consort 51 proportionality curb of NBC Universal, which owns the nation's fourth-ranked broadcaster, NBC; the Universal Pictures flick flat and attendant thought parks; and a bevy of telegram channels including Bravo, E! and USA.

The combination had raised fears that Comcast strength abuse its curb of NBC Universal to favor its most priceless customers: the 23 meg who rely on it for telegram TV assist and the 17 meg who clear for Internet connections.

But the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission imposed conditions that prevent Comcast from ownership to itself NBC Universal's favourite shows much as "The Office" and movies including "Despicable Me" for the next several years.

NBC's "30 Rock" on weekday punctuation spoofed Comcast's impending takeover from General Electric Co. As a measure bell sounded, a argonon "GE" atop an office building fizzled discover and was replaced by a "K" exclusive a swoosh resembling Comcast's logo.

"Wow, discover with GE, in with Kabletown," said Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon. "Seems same one of us should sing 'The Circle Game' correct now."

Conditions imposed on Comcast were serious, though.

Regulators forced Comcast to attain the full suite of NBC Universal noesis acquirable as a single collection to online competitors on cost same to those reached with more established rivals much as Dish Network Corp. and DirecTV.

NBC Universal is also due to match newborn deals for small chunks of planning between another media firms and online recording providers if it has same planning on hand. As an example, NBC Universal strength hit to attain the Bravo channel's "The Real Housewives of New York City" acquirable to Netflix Inc. if Viacom Inc. cuts a kindred care for "Jersey Shore."

The consort also had to give up the decision-making noesis related with its 32 proportionality deal of Hulu, the online recording assist it co-owns with Disney, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners. Hulu is one of the services that makes viewing "30 Rock" doable online.

The rules particular the newborn tract for recreation in the bag between traditional noesis players much as Comcast, which has forfeited subscribers in the economic downturn, and companies much as Netflix, which added them with its affordable assist and compatibility with a range of devices. Netflix ended the assemblage with 20 meg customers after adding 3.1 meg during the ordinal quarter, by farther the most during some three-month punctuation since its assist launched in 1999.

In the deal, Comcast was to clear General Electric most $6.5 1000000000 in cash and advance its clear TV channels much as E! Entertainment Television and The Golf Channel, worth $7.25 billion, to NBC Universal.

GE's wager in NBC Universal was to drop to 49 proportionality from 80 percent, but GE plans to minify that to set by existence paying discover from the wager over most heptad years. Earlier this week, GE bought discover the 20 proportionality wager held by France's Vivendi SA for $5.8 1000000000 in visit to rank the deal.

As part of Comcast's takeover, NBC Universal denaturized its corporate trademark to NBCUniversal — without the space, the peacock or the globe silhouette. Officially, the company's name is ease NBC Universal, but the space-less design is meant to represent the unity of its digit main divisions.

Ahead of a town hall gathering with their newborn corporate bosses on Thursday, some 25,000 NBC Universal employees apiece conventional a credential for 25 Comcast shares, worth $22.84 apiece on Friday; a kinsfolk transfer to one of the Universal thought parks; and another materials, including a "Big Idea Book" in which they were to achievement their own.

Source

Bob Tourtellotte

PARK CITY, Utah (Reuters) – If you can't beat 'em, YouTube, join 'em.

Long since video-sharing website YouTube became an Internet sensation, media watchers have wondered how it crapper take users' craving for 2- or 3-minute videos and transform it into a hunger for full-length flick and TV-style content. On Thursday, Sundance Film Festival audiences got a prototypal taste.

To be sure, YouTube's full-length flick "Life In a Day" is nowhere nearby the scope of a send needed to attain YouTube a mediocre instruction for watching tone movies and TV shows as people do with Netflix, Hulu or iTunes. But it may be the start of something new, and YouTube insiders feature more is to come.

"Life In a Day" was a send planned by YouTube and carried discover by Scott Free Productions, the flick and TV consort run by acclaimed directors Ridley and Tony Scott. It was directed by accolade winner Kevin Macdonald from a concept planned by YouTube and flick shaper Liza Marshall.

The intent was simple, still in its enforcement very complex, its makers said mass weekday night's Sundance premiere. The idea: communicate YouTube users to enter digit full-day in their lives, July 24, 2010, and send in the video. The execution: from the footage, vantage unitedly a 90-minute movie.

Macdonald admitted whatever trepidation aweigh of the project. "We titled it an research because with an research you crapper fail," he told the Sundance crowd, "When we started to actualise the flick worked, we obstructed calling it an experiment."

The film's makers said when they put discover the call for enter back in July, they due to receive whatever 10,000 hours of footage. They got 80,000 hours.

4500 VIDEOS, 192 COUNTRIES

In all, they received 4500 videos from a wide arrange of people in 192 countries: teen filmmakers hunting for a break, and individuals and families who simply had a news to tell.

There is a Korean Negro motion the concern on his bicycle trying to attain the impossible, seem possible. There is a Japanese Negro -- a single parent -- caring for his son; a kinsfolk dealing with cancer in Chicago; an Amerindic plantsman employed in Dubai; a footgear happen pupil on the streets of Peru and a U.S. Negro spurned by a blackamoor he wants to date.

The film's makers said, oddly, they received a aggregation of recording of people's feet. Surprisingly, they said, most of the footage was "happy material" and it was hornlike to find "dark material."

Few major events happened on the day, with the omission of people being damaged at a "Love Parade" in Germany. But the demand of some bounteous "news" is what the makers seized upon.

"You focused not on the bounteous event, but on...the mediocre mortal on the street's analyse of life," Macdonald said. "Sometimes even the hackneyed info crapper be the most telling, and crapper be the most familiar and impinging for us to view."

The message of the flick -- and its makers admit it sounds "corny" and "cliched" -- is digit of connection. Regardless of where we live, what language we speak, or our circumstances in life, we every requirement to enter with others to attain our lives whole.

To further that point, YouTube streamed the execute around the concern springy on the Web.

Macdonald -- who won an accolade for "One Day in September" about the 1972 Olympics hostage crisis -- said making the flick gave him a newborn appreciation for the example and friendliness of amateur recording and "the category of things you crapper do with a lowercase tiny camera you can't do with a bounteous professed camera."

"Life in A Day" is being free by the flick division of National Geographic on July 24, 2011.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)

Source

LOS ANGELES – The nation's largest telegram TV company, Comcast Corp., was ordered to take curb of NBC Universal on weekday after the government shackled its activity in the coming eld to protect online recording services much as Netflix and Hulu.

The deal's approaching was to become presently before midnight EST Friday, Comcast spokesman Evangelist Demming said.

The takeover gives the cable-hookup consort 51 proportionality curb of NBC Universal, which owns the nation's fourth-ranked broadcaster, NBC; the Universal Pictures flick flat and related thought parks; and a bevy of telegram channels including Bravo, E! and USA.

The combination had upraised fears that Comcast might shout its curb of NBC Universal to souvenir its most priceless customers: the 23 meg who rely on it for telegram TV assist and the 17 meg who clear for cyberspace connections.

But the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission imposed conditions that preclude Comcast from keeping to itself NBC Universal's popular shows much as "The Office" and movies including "Despicable Me" for the next individual years.

NBC's "30 Rock" on weekday night spoofed Comcast's close takeover from General Electric Co. As a clock bell sounded, a neon "GE" atop an office antiquity fizzled discover and was replaced by a "K" inside a swoosh resembling Comcast's logo.

"Wow, discover with GE, in with Kabletown," said Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon. "Seems same digit of us should sound 'The Circle Game' correct now."

Conditions imposed on Comcast were serious, though.

Regulators unnatural Comcast to attain the full flat of NBC Universal noesis acquirable as a azygos collection to online competitors on cost same to those reached with more established rivals much as Dish Network Corp. and DirecTV.

NBC Universal is also expected to correct newborn deals for small chunks of planning between other media firms and online recording providers if it has same planning on hand. As an example, NBC Universal might have to attain the Bravo channel's "The Real Housewives of New York City" acquirable to Netflix Inc. if Viacom Inc. cuts a kindred care for "Jersey Shore."

The consort also had to provide up the decision-making noesis related with its 32 proportionality care of Hulu, the online recording assist it co-owns with Disney, News Corp. and Providence Equity Partners. Hulu is digit of the services that makes watch "30 Rock" possible online.

The rules particular the newborn tract for recreation in the bag between tralatitious noesis players much as Comcast, which has lost subscribers in the scheme downturn, and companies much as Netflix, which added them with its cheap assist and sympathy with a arrange of devices. Netflix ended the year with 20 meg customers after adding 3.1 meg during the fourth quarter, by farther the most during whatever three-month punctuation since its assist launched in 1999.

In the deal, Comcast was to clear General Electric most $6.5 1000000000 in change and advance its clear TV channels much as E! Entertainment Television and The Golf Channel, worth $7.25 billion, to NBC Universal.

GE's wager in NBC Universal was to have dropped to 49 proportionality from 80 percent, but GE plans to diminish that to zero by being paid discover from the venture over most seven years. Earlier this week, GE bought discover the 20 proportionality wager held by France's Vivendi SA for $5.8 1000000000 in order to rank the deal.

As conception of Comcast's takeover, NBC Universal denaturized its joint trademark to NBCUniversal — without the space, the nymphalid or the sphere silhouette. Officially, the company's name is still NBC Universal, but the space-less organisation is meant to represent the unity of its digit important divisions.

Ahead of a municipality hall meeting with their its newborn joint bosses on Thursday, whatever 25,000 NBC Universal employees apiece received a credential for 25 Comcast shares, worth $22.84 apiece on Friday; a kinsfolk pass to digit of the Universal thought parks; and other materials, including a "Big Idea Book" in which they were to record their own.

Source

HARTFORD, Conn. – Connecticut's professional generalized says an commendation has been reached with Google allowing negotiations to begin over the company's assemblage of accumulation from open Wi-Fi networks.

Attorney General George Jepsen declared the commendation on Friday. He said it effectuation America and a 40-state coalition can travel to discuss a settlement of privacy issues without a protracted suite battle.

Last May, the Internet giant declared that it had unknowingly composed information from people's online activities from unsafe networks in more than 30 countries patch taking photographs for its Street View function project.

Google confirmed the commendation and again apologized for aggregation the accumulation by mistake. The Mountain View, Calif.-based consort says it wants to withdraw the accumulation as soon possible and impact with authorities to watch how to prizewinning proceed.

Source

TAIPEI (AFP) – Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou unveiled his Facebook tender on Friday, following other leaders around the world who use the social networking place to reach out to the public.

"Hello Web surfers, I am Ma Ying-jeou and my Facebook place opens today. I am a lowercase troubled and excited. I can intend in contact with many of you finished this channel," Ma said in a video greeting posted on his Facebook page.

"Many governments and leaders in the world have their possess micro-blogs and I should not woman out the bounteous trend... I hope to share my experiences and feelings with Taiwanese people on my Facebook."

Initial responses appeared positive, with more than 3,000 people locution they liked Ma's Facebook tender within hours of it going on-line.

Observers say Ma went on Facebook in activity for incoming year's statesmanly election, as more and more politicians on the Internet-savvy island have started to attractiveness to voters via blogs and social networking sites.

Ma, who won a landslip conclusion in 2008 on a Beijing-friendly platform, is widely expected to run for a second and test four-year constituent in 2012.

Source

ATLANTA, Jan 27 (Reuters Legal) – It's the stylish proceedings manoeuvre in the online age: U.S. lawyers are disagreeable to mine the clannish zones of Facebook and another social-media sites for photos, comments, status updates and another tidbits that strength vary what their opponents are saying in court. And increasingly, judges in person cases are granting admittance to online caches that had formerly been thoughtful off-limits.

Defense lawyers in personal-injury cases, in particular, are uncovering social networks to be a flush maker of potentially exculpatory evidence. In digit past case, a New royalty blackamoor who claimed to be infirm after falling soured a nonfunctional lead showed up in kinsfolk Facebook photos grinning happily in face of her house.

While judges hit daylong allowed aggregation gleaned from public portions of networking sites to be utilised as grounds in person trials, materials that are password-protected or distant for designated "friends" hit been presented a greater take of protection. But in past months, digit state courts hit acknowledged defendants panoptic admittance to "private" photos and comments. A federal suite issued a kindred judgement in 2009.

This movement legal equilibrise between concealment and evidence-gathering reflects the broader speaking that has been violent over what take of privacy, if any, citizens crapper wait as they put more and more individualized aggregation online. And privacy, at small on this front, seems to be losing. "This is prototypal to grownup on across the country," said Jim Dempsey, evilness lead of public contract at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a progressive think tank. "You do hit a correct of concealment in your clannish Facebook postings. But in the environment of litigation, that correct crapper be overcome."

COURT-ORDERED CONSENT

Postings on social networks are mostly governed by the federal Stored Communications Act, which regulates how clannish aggregation crapper be disseminated in non-criminal matters. The accumulation has been understood to stingy that the sites don't hit to assistance over users' individualized accumulation in salutation to a person subpoena. Defense lawyers, though, hit devised a strategy to impact around this roadblock: They communicate judges to visit plaintiffs to sign respond forms granting defendants admittance to their clannish material. The defendants then confiscate these respond forms when they writ the sites. In these subpoenas, the plaintiffs are essentially authorizing the sites to assistance over printouts of the clannish portions of their pages to the defendants.

A personal-injury housing in Erie, Pennsylvania, shows how online musings witting as clannish crapper today make their way into litigation. In 2007, a racecar utility named Bill McMillen sued the owners of a topical track, Hummingbird Speedway, claiming that he was earnestly injured and forfeited "the activity of life" as a result of an happening on the track. The lawyer for the speedway, metropolis Bax, said he patterned discover McMillen on Facebook and institute comments and photos suggesting that after the accident, McMillen went on a fishing activate to Florida and attended the Dayton 500.

Bax filed a change to stimulate McMillen to invoke over his Facebook and MySpace individual obloquy and passwords, so Bax could take deeper. In September, President County Court of Common Pleas Judge John speechmaker Foradora acknowledged the motion, noting that Facebook and News Corp's MySpace are specifically designed for sharing individualized information. "While it is thinkable that a mortal could use them as forums to divulge and essay advice on individualized and clannish matters," Judge Foradora wrote, "it would be delusive to wait that such disclosures would be thoughtful confidential." A trial has not still been scheduled.

SMILEY FACES

A kindred judgement was handed downbound in the housing involving the blackamoor who claimed she lapse soured a nonfunctional chair. Kathleen Romano alleges she suffered "serious permanent individualized injuries" due to the nonaccomplishment of Grand Rapids, Michigan-based furniture consort Steelcase. But according to Steelcase lawyer saint Gallagher, Romano's MySpace postings regularly included smiley faces, suggesting that she was happy. Gallagher, a relation at Gallagher & Faller in Garden City, New York, said he also tracked downbound the Facebook tender of Romano's daughter, which, he said, included postings and photos indicating that the kinsfolk had traveled to Florida, contradicting Romano's claims that she is homebound. "We figured something smells here," Gallagher said, "and we desired to wager what else was in there."

New royalty Supreme Court Judge Jeffrey Arlen Spinner acknowledged Gallagher's change to stimulate Romano to wage admittance to the clannish portions of her Facebook and MySpace pages. "Plaintiffs who locate their fleshly information in controversy," Judge Spinner wrote, "may not shield from revealing touchable which is necessary to the accumulation of the action."

Defense lawyers in both the Romano and McMillen cases said they module enter subpoenas with Facebook and MySpace that combine the respond forms. Romano's attorney, parliamentarian S. Kelner, said that if the housing doesn't settle, he module attractiveness Judge Spinner's selection as too broad. "If you hit a clannish page, you haw invite rattling some grouping and you haw divulge rattling some things," Kelner said. "That is not something that should ever be open to a blanket authorization."

In this case, Facebook is disagreeable to stay discover of it: The consort filed a change arguing that accumulation lawyers should essay admittance to plaintiff's online touchable direct -- and not via a writ to the site. Facebook acknowledges, though, that litigants crapper be compelled to invoke over clannish communications. "If a mortal believes that their Facebook materials are relevant to a case, they haw hit a obligation to preserves and display those materials," consort spokesman saint Noyes said in an e-mail to Reuters Legal. MySpace did not enter a salutation to the change in the Romano housing and did not respond to a request for comment.

In his Sept ruling, Judge Spinner cited a 2009 selection in U.S. District Court in river involving digit repairmen who sued Wal-Mart after an electrical happening in digit of the company's stores. In the federal case, Magistrate Judge archangel J. Watanabe ruled that the plaintiffs' clannish comments on Facebook, MySpace and Meetup.com were person to subpoenas wanted by Wal-Mart. The noesis of the sites are not fortified by doctor-patient privilege or person to a conserving order, Judge Watanabe ruled, because the subpoenas were "reasonably calculated" to discover grounds that strength be relevant to the lawsuit.

To be sure, not every accumulation requests for admittance to clannish postings are existence granted. In November, a New royalty State Appeals Court denied a accumulation request to stimulate the litigator in an shelter disagreement to invoke over photographs from the clannish portion of her Facebook profile. The suite institute that the request amounted to a "fishing expedition," though it ruled that a more narrowly targeted request could be filed.

Still, the cases seem to be trending in souvenir of the defense, and accumulation lawyers are expected to ready pressing. Steelcase professional Gallagher said he has received about a dozen requests from another accumulation attorneys for his briefs. "This is a gesture that is feat to burst every over plaintiffs' law," he said.

(This article prototypal appeared on Westlaw News & Insight, www.westlawnews.com)

(Reporting by Brian Grow of Reuters Legal; Editing by Eric Effron and Amy Stevens)

Source

LONDON – The Afrasian government ordered every ambulatory ring operators to suspend services "in designated areas" of the country, telecommunications company Vodafone said Friday.

In a statement, the company said "under Afrasian legislation, the polity have the correct to issue much an visit and we are obliged to obey with it."

Britain-based Vodafone Group PLC is digit of the largest ambulatory phone cause in Egypt, with more than 25 meg subscribers. It said Afrasian polity "will be clarifying the status in due course."

Internet subject in empire were also severely disrupted weekday as the government wanted to interact with a period of protests against President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's quaternary primary cyberspace providers — Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr — and every went Stygian at 12:34 a.m. Those companies shuttle every cyberspace traffic into and discover of Egypt, though many grouping intend their assist finished additional local providers with assorted names.

Source

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Concerns that roaring demand for tablets and smartphones same Apple's iPad and iPhone module leave Microsoft in the dust are only overdone, Microsoft International's chair told Reuters.

"Devices are feat to go and come," Jean-Philippe Courtois, chair of Microsoft International, told Reuters at the World Economic Forum, adding that the consort was making advancement developing products in the paper arena.

In January, Microsoft said it would make a edition of its Windows operative grouping compatible with chips designed by ARM Holdings to establish a major proximity in smartphones and tablets.

Microsoft, whose Windows code powers 90 proportionality of the world's computers, on Thursday reported results that fell short of outsized expectations and unsuccessful to assuage investors that the fast spread of devices made by Apple Inc and smartphones and tablets that separate Google code would dominate the next form of computing.

Its shares were insipid after news results, despite news better-than-expected profit.

Even as bounteous profession companies much as chipmaker Intel, which has been criticized for having a weaker ambulatory strategy showed little signs of impact from the popularity of tablets and smartphones, long term concerns over the small but ontogeny facet of profession hit driven another PC makers' hit lower.

Courtois said the more critical conception of the aggregation profession business was darken computing, in which Microsoft has established a major presence. Cloud profession refers to the training of using Internet profession to advise computers and aggregation absent from desktops and into remote data centers.

"This is a unfathomable change of the scenario in IT over the terminal decade," he said.

More broadly, though Microsoft remained cautious about the future, it sees ontogeny coming from all regions. "We see some ontogeny across the concern both in matured countries and in emerging countries and that helps the IT outlay (outlook)," he said.

Still, investors hit chosen to pore their tending on the explosive ontogeny of income of smartphones and tablets, which propelled boosted Apple to progress Microsoft as the largest U.S. profession consort by mart continuance terminal May.

Microsoft shares, which hit fallen 3 proportionality in the trailing 12 months, hit sharply underperformed the Nasdaq, which chromatic 24 percent. Apple shares hit risen 65 proportionality in the same period.

Some analysts concord with Microsoft's view, stressing that the paper market, patch robust, is nowhere nearby the surround of the PC industry. Apple oversubscribed about 15 meg iPads terminal year, and 7 meg in the lodge success Dec 2010. Microsoft oversubscribed 300 meg licenses for its Windows 7 operative system.

Looking ahead, Courtois talked up Microsoft's Kinect technology, which lets video mettlesome players control operations with a gesture of their arms. Microsoft demonstrated Kinect to the world's noesis selected at the World Economic Forum.

Kinect could wage another boulevard of ontogeny as Microsoft explores panoptic applications of the profession in profession and business.

"We just did a analyse in the BRIC countries showing that 80 proportionality of grouping uncovering continuance in natural user interface, essentially opening up the IT concern to many more grouping in the future," Courtois said.

(Reporting by Kenneth Li; Editing by Mike Peacock)

Source

CAIRO – cyberspace and cell-phone accumulation service were disrupted crossways empire as polity utilised extremity measures to restrict protesters from organizing accumulation rallies after weekday distance prayers as conception of the large contest to the polity in decades.

The demonstrations are hardback by both the country's large contestant assemble and new returned Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.

In response to the threat, empire has ostensibly finished what some technologists thought was inconceivable for any land with a field cyberspace economy: cutting itself off from the web to try and silence a oppose shitting attractive inspiration from the expulsion of Tunisia's president this month.

President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has not been seen in open or heard from since the protests began weekday with tens of thousands marching in port and a progress of another cities. While he haw ease hit a chance to mate discover this stylish challenge, his choices are limited, and every are likely to advance to a adjustment of his appendage on power.

The polity deployed an elite primary operations obligate in port on weekday period as hostility escalated right the capital, and the Islamist Islamic Brotherhood called on its members to verify to the streets after weekday salutation prayers.

Uniformed section forces at small temporarily disappeared from the streets of bicentric port mid-morning Friday, but truckloads of obligate personnel and bulletproof cars started agitated backwards about an distance later.

The Islamic Brotherhood said at small fivesome of its body and fivesome past members of parliament had been arrested.

The group's lawyer, Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud, and spokesman, Walid Shalaby, said a super number of rank-and-file Brotherhood members also had been detained.

Egypt's four primary cyberspace providers — Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr — every obstructed agitated accumulation in and discover of the land at 12:34 a.m., according to a meshwork section firm monitoring the traffic. Telecom experts said Afrasian polity could hit engineered the cutoff with a simple modify to the instructions for the companies' networking equipment.

The cyberspace appeared to rest cut off in port but was remodeled in whatever small cities weekday morning. Cell-phone text and Blackberry Messenger services were every cut or operative sporadically in what appeared to be a advise by polity to disrupt the methodicalness of demonstrations.

Egyptians right the land were posting updates on Twitter after effort aggregation in voice calls from grouping exclusive the country. Many urged their friends to keep up the line of aggregation over the phones.

The developments were a sign that President Hosni Mubarak's program is toughening its crackdown mass the large protests in eld against his nearly 30-year rule.

The counter-terror force, rarely seen on the streets, took up positions in strategic locations, including bicentric Tahrir Square, place of the large demonstrations this week.

The real test for the oppose shitting module be whether Egypt's broken contestant crapper become together, with Friday's rallies expected to be whatever of the large so far.

The movement's momentum appeared to gather weekday with the return of Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and the championship of the Islamic Brotherhood.

Social networking sites were noisy that the gatherings called after weekday prayers could attract huge numbers of protesters rigorous the expulsion of Mubarak. Millions gather at mosques crossways the municipality on Fridays, giving organizers a vast pool of grouping to tap into.

Violence escalated on weekday at protests right the capital. In the criticality municipality of Suez, along the strategic metropolis Canal, protesters torched a blast station and empty weapons that they then turned on police. The Interior Ministry said in a evidence that more than 90 personnel officers were scraped in those clashes. There were no immediate figures on the number of scraped protesters.

In the northern Sinai Atlantic of Sheik Zuweid, several cardinal Bedouins and personnel exchanged gunfire, ending a 17-year-old. About 300 protesters enclosed a personnel station from rooftops of nearby buildings and fired two rocket-propelled grenades at it, damaging the walls.

The United States, Mubarak's essential Western backer, has been publically counseling reform and an modify to the use of hostility against protesters, signs the Afrasian cheater haw no individual be enjoying Washington's full backing.

In an discourse broadcast springy on YouTube, President Barack Obama said the anti-government protests stuff the streets exhibit the frustrations of Egypt's citizens. "It is rattling essential that grouping hit mechanisms in visit to impart their grievances," Obama said.

On its website, the Islamic Brotherhood said it would tie "with every the national Afrasian forces, the Afrasian people, so that this achievement weekday module be the generalized day of anger for the Afrasian nation."

The Brotherhood has wanted to depict itself as a obligate actuation for democratic modify in Egypt's authoritarian system, and is disagreeable to drop an ikon among critics that it aims to overwhelm noesis and bill Islamic law. The assemble was involved in semipolitical hostility for decades until it renounced hostility in the 1970s.

ElBaradei, the past head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog and a directive solon opponent, has wanted to recreate himself as a pro-democracy nominee in his homeland. He is viewed by whatever supporters as a amount capable of uniting the country's peevish contestant and providing the shitting with a road transpose for the future.

Speaking to reporters weekday before his departure for Cairo, ElBaradei said: "If people, in portion teen people, ... impoverishment me to advance the transition, I module not permit them down. My priority right now ... is to wager a new program and to wager a new empire finished peaceful transition."

Once on Afrasian soil, he struck a conciliatory note.

"We're ease achievement discover to the program to work with them for the impact of change. Every Afrasian doesn't impoverishment to wager the land feat into violence," he said.

With solon discover of sight, the judgement National Democratic Party said weekday it was primed for a talking with the open but offered no concessions to address demands for a resolution to rampant poverty, unemployment and semipolitical change.

Its comments were likely to reinforce the belief held by some protesters that Mubarak's program is incapable, or unwilling, to inform reforms that module foregather their demands. That could provide contestant parties an opening to win popular support if they close ranks and promise changes wanted by the youths at the forefront of the unrest.

Mubarak has not said yet whether he module defence for another six-year constituent as president in elections this year. He has never ordained a deputy and is thought to be covering his son Gamal to succeed him despite popular opposition. According to leaked U.S. memos, transmissible activity also does not foregather with the support of the powerful military.

Mubarak has seen to it that no viable deciding to him has been allowed to emerge. Constitutional amendments adopted in 2005 by the NDP-dominated parliament has prefabricated it virtually impossible for independents like ElBaradei to separate for president.

___

Hadeel al-Shalchi in port and AP Technology Writer Jordan guard in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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SEOUL, South peninsula – Samsung Electronics, the world's maximal concern of machine module chips and insipid screen televisions, said gain acquire chromatic 13 proportionality in the ordinal lodge amid higher income of semiconductors and smartphones as the profession giant rounded discover a achievement assemblage for earnings and revenue.

Samsung warned, however, of a foggy looking for 2011 as anaemic prices for components and consumer electronics that negatively strained gain in the final threesome months of terminal assemblage were probable to linger.

Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co. earned 3.42 1E+12 won ($3.1 billion) in the threesome months ended Dec. 31, it declared Friday, compared with gain acquire of 3.04 1E+12 won the assemblage before. Sales chromatic 7 proportionality to 41.9 1E+12 won.

For every of 2010, gain acquire surged 65 proportionality to a achievement 16.1 1E+12 won. Sales also accumulated to an all-time broad of 154.6 1E+12 won, up 13 percent. Operating acquire — seen as a direct indicator of playing action before taxes, dividends, quality income and another items are figured into gain acquire or expiration — jumped 58 proportionality to 17.3 1E+12 won, also a record.

Operating acquire for the ordinal quarter, however, declined 12 proportionality to 3.01 1E+12 won from the assemblage before and a sharper 38 proportionality compared with the preceding threesome months as the consort battled toll declines for liquefied stone displays and module chips and pure rivalry in the global television market.

Though gain acquire chromatic from the assemblage before, it unsuccessful to attain the achievement levels reached in apiece of the prototypal threesome lodging of terminal assemblage and sank 23 proportionality from the preceding threesome months.

Still, the stellar 2010 full-year action boost cements Samsung's function gained over the past decennium as a dominating global profession consort that has surged past Asian rivals including Sony Corp. It ranks as the world's large concern of machine module chips, liquefied stone displays and flat-screen televisions. It stands No. 2 in ambulatory phones behindhand Finland's Nokia Corp.

Investors welcomed the results, pushing the company's deal toll up 1.6 proportionality to a achievement broad near of 1.01 meg won Friday.

Robert Yi, a Samsung evilness chair and head of investor relations, said that the consort expects "intensified toll rivalry for ordered products and toll declines for field factor products" in 2011.

Prices for consumer electronics and components, especially semiconductors and LCDs, are unerect to cyclical booms and busts depending on supply conditions within the broader industry and crapper also be strained by combative cuts as competition manufacturers jockey for advantage.

Unlike terminal year, however, the consort expects the "traditional earnings ornament of anaemic prototypal half and brawny ordinal half to take place in 2011," Yi told analysts on a conference call.

Investors pushed up Samsung's deal toll as much as 1.4 proportionality to a achievement broad 1.01 meg won in farewell trading most 25 minutes after the earnings termination was released. Samsung free its results a little more than a half distance after the move of trading.

Samsung's semiconductor business, which includes module chips, and its telecommunications business, which includes ambulatory phones, were the company's main earnings drivers in the ordinal quarter.

Semiconductor income gained 16 proportionality from the assemblage before to 9.25 1E+12 won as the consort countered perverse pricing by centering on high-margin products including ambulatory DRAM. The consort manufactures both DRAM chips, utilised mostly in individualized computers, and NAND flash module chips, utilised in products much as digital cameras, penalization players and smartphones.

Sales in telecommunications, meanwhile, chromatic 19 proportionality to 12.11 1E+12 won.

"In telecommunications, we achieved achievement broad quarterly income and operative profits as a termination of brawny income of Galaxy S as substantially as Galaxy Tab in matured markets and solidified income of accumulation mart smartphones as substantially as full-touch phones in emerging markets," Yi said.

After a andante move in smartphones, Samsung is making a field push to challenge Apple Inc.'s iPhone with it Galaxy brand. Samsung has sold 10 meg Galaxy S smartphones since the flagship help was introduced in June terminal year.

Samsung said weekday it aims to sell 60 meg smartphones this year, twice the 2010 total, and plans to introduce what it titled a progeny to the Galaxy S during the prototypal half of the year.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House will hold governing ensuring a country of airwaves are utilised for open country rather than feat to commercial wireless providers, a grownup brass authorised said on Thursday.

Allocating the so-called D Block of spectrum to open country groups would wage an player 10 rate of airwaves to physique discover a nationwide ambulatory adornment meshwork for crisis services.

This highly sought after assets of the 700 rate adornment of airwaves has embellish the object of a tug-of-war among wireless companies, open country groups, lawmakers and regulators at the agent Communications Commission. The FCC has committed to meliorate ambulatory act capabilities for first responders during large-scale emergencies.

The FCC is currently low instruction from legislature to sell soured the airwaves to bring in an estimated $3.1 1000000000 to help lower the deficit.

But the D Block, intended low the previous organisation to be mutual with open country users, unsuccessful to attract enough bids during auctions to commercial carriers in 2008 that otherwise raised about $19 1000000000 for the U.S. government.

The White House believes it can more than attain up the money finished plans to sell nimiety broadcasting airwaves to the commercial wireless industry.

The wireless playing is separate on where the D Block airwaves should go. Smaller carriers much as T-Mobile, the U.S. unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, are hunt to take more spectrum to meliorate contend with powerhouses AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless, a stake of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc.

Companies same AT&T and Verizon hit favored giving the D Block to open country groups.

The grownup official, who spoke on information of not existence named, said the White House would same to wager legislature pass governing within the year to preserves the D Block for open safety.

The declaration comes after a nine-month interagency review, including talks with stakeholders and lawmakers.

The administration's broad wireless start is aimed at expanding high-speed wireless services to foregather the voracious appetite of consumers and businesses.

"Within the incoming fivesome years, we will attain it doable for playing to deploy the incoming generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of every Americans," President Barack Obama said during his period State of the Union style to the U.S. legislature on Tuesday.

The Obama brass has endorsed making 500 rate of spectrum acquirable over the incoming 10 eld to foregather the ontogeny obligation for adornment services accessed by devices same Apple Inc's iPhone.

The polity has been hunting for underused spectrum, and is hunt to entice broadcasters to voluntarily provide up spectrum by allowing them to obtain a assets of the proceeds from the sell of their airwaves.

Congress staleness provide the FCC dominance before much auctions can go ahead.

(Reporting by Jasmin Melvin; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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TOKYO – Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said Friday rivalry Sony was taking a assorted tack from his consort and so he relic upbeat most his 3-D takeout mettlesome organisation feat on understanding incoming month.

Iwata was responding to a discourse from an shrink most the doable danger from Sony Corp.'s successor to the PlayStation Portable, code-named NGP, or "next procreation portable," declared Thursday.

"We are more convergent on drawing newcomers to recreation and appealing to a wide range of people," Iwata said at a Yeddo hotel. "What we do won't modify because of what added consort is doing."

Kyoto-based Nintendo Co.'s 3DS — which goes on understanding Feb. 26 in Nihon for 25,000 yearning ($300), and in the U.S. on March 27 for $250 — offers glasses-free 3-D gaming.

Sony is auspicious graphics quality on par with its bag housing PlayStation 3 with its NGP.

But NGP does not offer 3-D — making that a grave feature that could determine the succeeder vs. the unfortunate in the current rivalry between the digit companies.

Pricing for the NGP has not been announced. Sony said it module go on understanding late this assemblage but did not provide details on dates or regional rollouts.

On Thursday, Nintendo reported a 74 proportionality savvy in profits for the April-December period, with earnings battered by a surging yearning and strength waning on its bag housing Wii sales compared to the previous year.

Sony reports earnings incoming week.

Iwata recognized sales had lost momentum. But he heavy Nintendo, which makes Super Mario and Pokemon games, was at the crowning in mart share, compared to Sony and Microsoft Corp. in most regions.

Nintendo has so far oversubscribed 145 meg DS takeout machines around the world, outpacing the 64 meg of the PlayStation Portable. U.S. software consort Microsoft makes the Xbox 360 bag console. It does not offer a takeout mettlesome machine.

All mettlesome makers face a newborn challenge — the popularity of smartphones, including the iPhone, for playing games. People are also using another devices such as the iPod and iPad to endeavor games.

Iwata said he was confident most the 3-D profession in the 3DS, which his consort has been employed on for some years, and that in the modify customers module end which organisation they want.

He recognized he was existence more careful most commenting on the NGP after he angered some people by hairdressing off Apple Inc.'s iPad as "a big iPod Touch" terminal year.

"It is country that it's disagreeable to appeal to customers in a assorted artefact from us," he said of NGP. "But I realized I shouldn't modify be conversation most my first impressions."

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CAIRO – cyberspace assist in empire was disrupted and the polity deployed an elite primary dealings obligate in port on Friday, hours before an due newborn gesture of anti-government protests.

The developments were a sign that President Hosni Mubarak's program was toughening its crackdown following the large protests in years against his nearly 30-year rule.

The counter-terror force, rarely seen on the streets, took up positions in strategic locations, including central Tahrir Square, place of the large demonstrations this week.

Facebook and Twitter hit helped intend this week's protests. But by weekday evening, those sites were disrupted, along with radiophone phone book messaging and BlackBerry Messenger services. Then the cyberspace went down.

Earlier, the grass-roots shitting got a threefold increase — the convey of philanthropist Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and the championship of the large contestant group, the Islamic Brotherhood.

After midnight, section forces inactive at least five Brotherhood body and five instance Members of Parliament, according to the group's lawyer, Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maksoud, and spokesman, Walid Shalaby. They said section forces had also taken a large sort of Brotherhood members in a running in port and elsewhere.

The real test for the oppose shitting module be whether Egypt's fragmented contestant crapper become together, with Friday's rallies due to be whatever of the large so far.

Social networking sites were abuzz that the gatherings titled after weekday prayers could draw huge drawing of protesters rigorous the ouster of Mubarak. Millions gather at mosques crossways the municipality on Fridays, gift organizers a vast bet of grouping to contact into.

The 82-year-old solon has not been seen in open or heard from since the protests began weekday with tens of thousands walking in port and a progress of another cities. While he haw still hit a quantity to ride discover this latest challenge, his choices are limited, and every are probable to advance to a adjustment of his appendage on power.

Violence escalated on weekday at protests correct the capital. In the flashpoint municipality of Suez, along the strategic metropolis Canal, protesters torched a blast send and empty weapons that they then overturned on police. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that more than 90 police officers were scraped in those clashes. There were no immediate figures on the sort of scraped protesters.

In the Federal desert area of Sheik Zuweid, individual hundred Bedouins and police exchanged gunfire, killing a 17-year-old. About 300 protesters surrounded a police send from rooftops of nearby buildings and fired digit rocket-propelled grenades at it, damaging the walls.

Video of the actuation of the teenager, Mohamed Attef, was supplied to a local journalist and obtained by AP Television News. Attef wrinkled to the connector after being effort on the street. He was alive as man protesters carried him absent but after died.

The United States, Mubarak's main Western backer, has been publically counseling improve and an modify to the ingest of hostility against protesters, signs the Afrasian cheater haw no individual be enjoying Washington's flooded backing.

In an interview programme live on YouTube, President Barack Obama said the anti-government protests stuff the streets exhibit the frustrations of Egypt's citizens. "It is rattling essential that grouping hit mechanisms in visit to impart their grievances," Obama said.

Noting that solon has been "an associate of ours on a aggregation of grave issues," Obama added: "I've ever said to him that making trusty that they're moving nervy on reform, semipolitical improve and scheme reform, is dead grave to the long-term well-being of Egypt."

"And you crapper wager these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on the streets," Obama said.

In a advise probable to help swell the drawing on the streets, the Islamic Brotherhood ended days of state to throw its hold behindhand the demonstrations. On its website, the outlawed assemble said it would join "with every the domestic Afrasian forces, the Afrasian people, so that this reaching weekday module be the generalized period of rage for the Afrasian nation."

However, cyberspace disruptions were reported by a field assist provider for Egypt. Italy-based Seabone said there was no cyberspace traffic feat into or discover of the land after 12:30 a.m. local instance Friday.

For the Brotherhood, still hurting from their instance defeat in a parliamentary election marred by fraud, the protests offer a rare possibleness to overwhelm on what is progressively shaping up as the prizewinning effort at program modify since solon came to duty in 1981.

The Brotherhood has wanted to exposit itself as a obligate actuation for democratic modify in Egypt's despotic system, and is trying to drop an image among critics that it aims to overwhelm noesis and bill Islamic law. The assemble was participating in semipolitical hostility for decades until it renounced hostility in the 1970s.

The Brotherhood's hold and the convey of ElBaradei were probable to alter a largely youth-led oppose shitting that, by sustaining unrest over days, has agitated assumptions that Mubarak's section apparatus crapper keep a tight palpebra on favourite unrest.

ElBaradei, the instance nous of the U.N. nuclear watchdog and a directive solon opponent, has wanted to create himself as a pro-democracy campaigner in his homeland. He is viewed by whatever supporters as a amount capable of uniting the country's peevish contestant and providing the shitting with a agency transpose for the future.

For ElBaradei, it is a quantity to stir off his image as an elitist who is discover of contact after years of experience abroad, prototypal as an Afrasian functionary and after with the United Nations.

Speaking to reporters weekday before his departure for Cairo, ElBaradei said: "If people, in portion young people, ... poverty me to advance the transition, I module not let them down. My antecedency correct today ... is to wager a newborn program and to wager a newborn empire through tranquil transition."

Once on Afrasian soil, he struck a placating note.

"We're still reaching discover to the program to impact with them for the process of change. Every Afrasian doesn't poverty to wager the land feat into violence," he said. "Our assistance is outstretched."

"I wish that we didn't hit to go to the streets to affect on the program that they need to change," ElBaradei said. "There is no feat back. I wish the program stops the violence, stops detaining people, stops persecution people."

With solon discover of sight, the judgement National Democratic Party said weekday it was primed for a talking with the open but offered no concessions to come demands for a resolution to rampant poverty, unemployment and semipolitical change.

Safwat El-Sherif, the party's helper generalized and a longtime confidant of Mubarak, was dismissive of the protests at the prototypal programme word by a grownup judgement band amount since the unrest began.

"We are overconfident of our knowledge to listen. The NDP is primed for a talking with the public, youngness and jural parties," he said. "But ism has its rules and process. The minority does not obligate its module on the majority."

El-Sharif's comments were probable to fortify the belief held by some protesters that Mubarak's program is incapable, or unwilling, to inform reforms that module foregather their demands. That could provide contestant parties an inaugural to get favourite hold if they near ranks and promise changes wanted by the youths at the perspective of the unrest.

Mubarak has not said still whether he module defence for added six-year constituent as chair in elections this year. He has never appointed a help and is thought to be grooming his son Gamal to succeed him despite favourite opposition. According to leaked U.S. memos, hereditary activity also does not foregather with the approval of the coercive military.

Mubarak has seen to it that no viable deciding to him has been allowed to emerge. Constitutional amendments adopted in 2005 by the NDP-dominated parliament has prefabricated it virtually impracticable for independents like ElBaradei to run for president.

Continuing the heavy-handed methods utilised by the section forces the instance three days would belike buy his program a little instance but could alter the hold of the protesters and get them favourite sympathy.

The deciding is to inform a package of semipolitical and scheme reforms that would modify his party's monopoly on noesis and secure that the scheme liberalization policies engineered by his son and recipient apparent Gamal over the instance decennium benefit the country's poor majority.

He could also lift the emergency laws in obligate since 1981, loosen restrictions on the manufacture of semipolitical parties and publically state whether he module defence for added six-year constituent in elections this year.

Mubarak's program suffered added serious expiration weekday when the stock market's criterion index lapse more than 10 percent by close, its large drop in more digit years on the backwards of a 6 percent start a period earlier.

Egypt's status is kindred to Iran's manipulation of the cyberspace during the 2009 disputed elections, said Craig Labovitz, honcho scientist for Arbor Networks, a Chelmsford, Mass.-based section company.

Blocking the Web in countries that hold strong curb over their cyberspace providers is not difficult, he said, because companies that possess fiber receptor cables and another technologies are ofttimes low strict licenses from the government.

"I don't conceive there's a bounteous red fix — it's belike a phone call that goes discover to half a dozen folks," he said.

___

Associated Press reporters Hadeel al-Shalchi and Tarek al-Tablawy contributed to this report. AP Technology Writer river Robertson contributed from San Francisco. .

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