The pigment colour wheel. Where's the CEO? Photograph: Public Domain
As Apple and Samsung dominate, Japan's tech giants are in a free fall - The Washington Post
While electronics giants Apple and Samsung fight each other for market dominance, with hotly competitive product releases and tit-for-tat patent lawsuits, Japan's consumer electronics makers find themselves in an increasingly perilous fight for relevance and, in some cases, survival.
Companies such as Sony, Panasonic and Sharp once controlled the industry, outclassing and outselling their US rivals. But now they represent the most alarming telltale of corporate Japan's two-decade struggle to adapt, downsize and innovate.
More spring cleaning >> Official Google Blog
Latest scheduled for the chop: AdSense for Feeds (to put ads in RSS feeds); spreadsheet gadgets; Google News's Badges and Recommended Sections; and more. The Google News ones didn't last long. Besides Google News itself, has any of Google's initiatives around news content lasted? (FastFlip didn't - what else?)Lookout releases protection against dialer-related attacks >> Official Lookout blog
The industry is working fast to patch this vulnerability. Google patched it for the stock Android dialer nearly three months ago (but it's unknown how broadly that patch has been merged into OEM Android firmwares), and phone manufacturers and carriers have already issued patches for a number of popular device types.Google Play: Lookout Security software.
While we're not aware of malicious examples of a dialer-based attack in-the-wild, it still remains a concerning vulnerability: the worst known exploit results in total data loss, and there are likely a number of additional device-specific codes that are not being broadly discussed. The vulnerability still may affect many Android handsets.
Color CEO Bill Nguyen checks out of day-to-day operations, while a new leadership team re-tools >> TechCrunch
First paragraph:Sources tell us there is turmoil at the executive levels of Color Labs. As you may know, the startup launched with a focus on photo-sharing but quickly became the poster child of Silicon Valley hype after landing more than $40m in funding but failing to gain any real user traction. In recent months the company's leadership has been in a state of flux, we're told -- and some are attributing the instability to Color's charismatic but controversial founder Bill Nguyen.One day someone's going to teach Techcrunch the difference between news stories and stream of consciousness. Anyhow, it looks like Color is pretty much washed up at this stage.
StarCraft: Orcs in space go down in flames >> Code Of Honor
From the games frontiers of the 1990s:As Ion Storm started to disintegrate due to financial and political problems, members of its development teams left to pursue other opportunities. From this crew Blizzard managed to hire Mark Skelton and Patrick Thomas for the burgeoning cinematics team, where they worked to produce some of Blizzard's epic cut-scenes. I spent a lot of time with the cinematics team members (who sat not far from me) and hung out with Mark and Patrick, including during numerous surfing outings to Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach.And it gets better.
At some point I talked with Mark and Patrick about how Dominion Storm knocked us on our heels, and they let us in on Ion Storm's dirty little secret: the entire demo was a pre-rendered movie, and the people who showed the "demo" were just pretending to play the game.
Even Windows 8 early adopters prefer Windows 7 by two to one >> ZDNet
Forumswindows8.com, the self-proclaimed largest Windows 8 help and support forum on the Internet, is filled with posts on such subjects as how to try to terminate a process in the Windows 8 task manager when access is denied and the state of Winodws 8 HP printer drivers. These hard-core Windows 8 early adopters group recently polled their users. And, 50,000 votes later, they found that their memberships' favorite Windows operating system was overwhemling Windows 7.Who on earth are these 2% on the Windows 8 forums whose favourite isn't Windows 8,7, or XP? They're not - gasp - Vista users, are they?
The breakdown for favorite version of Windows, from top to bottom, was Windows 7: 53%; Windows 8: 25%, XP: 20% and Other: 2%. Research house Gartner wouldn't argue. In a Webinar, Gartner analysts Steve Kleynhans and Michael Silver argue that if your company is still using XP you want to upgrade to Windows 7 and not be distracted by Windows 8.
Taking the American Express Passbook pass for a spin >> idownloadblog
Let me just say, that it's great that Amex is gung-ho about supporting Passbook. As a big time Amex user, I welcome the ability to get a quick glance at my account balances and last charges, across all of my iCloud synced devices.Apple's quiet shift into mobile payments by capturing card use?
I will say that the actual look of the passes leave a lot to be desired. Amex makes some good looking, if not iconic looking pieces of plastic. Amex cards, in general, look anything but generic, but its Passbook passes are about as generic as they get.
Google's answer to Siri thinks ahead >> Technology Review
Google Now also introduces a new trick. It combines the constant stream of data a smartphone collects on its owner with clues about the person's life that Google can sift from Web searches and e-mails to guess what he or she would ask it for next. This enables Google Now not only to meet a user's needs but also, in some cases, to preëmpt them. Virtual index cards appear offering information it thinks you need to know at a particular time.
"That's actually been a goal for us with Android from the beginning," says Hugo Barra, director of product management for Android, when asked why Google has moved to position a souped-up version of search at the heart of Android. The desire to offer useful information without a person even asking "comes from Larry [Page, Google's cofounder]," adds Barra, "if you read the [2012] founders' letter, he said that one of the company goals is to get out of the way of the user."
Android users download 870 MB a month over cellular: New research >> TelecomTV
A new paper from NPD Connected Intelligence shows that Android smartphone users, in the US, on average download about 870 MB of data per month on cellular networks and around 2.5 GB per month on Wi-Fi networks.This seems like a colossal amount; the sample was 1,000 Android users, in which those aged 18-24 used the most mobile data (1.05GB/month); those aged 55 or older used the least - 750MB/month. This still seems huge compared to normal usage in the UK, where 500MB marks off high usage.
The data is noteworthy in light of recent network and pricing strategies by wireless carriers. AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless currently charge customers on a per-MB basis, where prices decline as subscribers add more data to their monthly allotment. Elsewhere, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA offer unlimited smartphone data services.
Google's "iLost" Motorola ad faked an address to "lose" iOS 6 Maps >> AppleInsider
Daniel Eran Dilger:Apple's new Maps service certainly isn't without flaw, making the fake address goosechase that Google invented to create its Droid "iLost" advertising even more surprising. Why not just point out a real address that Apple's Maps can't actually locate?Which he then proceeds to try - but also compares how Google manages.
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