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Sunday, 18 November 2012

Indo-American NASA astronaut Sunita Williams to return to Earth Today


                                                          iThinkShare

 Indo-American NASA astronaut                  Sunita Williams to return to Earth Today


  

                                                            Houston: Record-setting Indo-American NASA astronaut Sunita Williams along with two other cosmonauts will return to Earth Sunday, after four months in orbit.

Williams ceremonially handed over the command of the International Space Station to fellow NASA astronaut Kevin Ford on the eve of her departure from the complex on Saturday.

Williams along with Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Russian Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko will return to earth on Sunday.This exchange of command by Expedition Commander 33, Williams, who along with Malenchenko and Hoshide have lived on the space station since mid-July, heralds the beginning of Expedition 34.


"We have left the ship in good shape and am honoured to handed over to Kevin as we are going soon home and the ship is again in good hands," Williams said while handing over the command.

Ford, who has served as an Expedition 33 flight engineer since arriving at the station Oct 25, will become commander of Expedition 34 at the time the Soyuz TMA-05M carrying Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko undocks from the station today at 5:26 pm EST for a landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan several hours later.

Their return will wrap up 127 days in space since their launch from Kazakhstan on July 15 last, including 125 days spent aboard the station. Ford and his crewmates, Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin, will tend to the station as a three-man crew until the arrival of three additional Flight Engineers in December.

NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko are scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Dec 19 and dock to the station two days later for a five-month stay.

Hadfield will become the first Canadian to command the station when Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin depart in March, marking the start of Expedition 35

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

5,000 relics from Titanic to sell in New York

5,000 relics from Titanic to sell in New York

 NEW YORK – Five thousand items recovered from the Atlantic grave of the Titanic, from a 17-ton piece of the hull to china used to serve first-class passengers, will go on auction in New York a century after the liner sank.


 

The unprecedented collection will be sold as a single lot by Guernsey’s Auctioneers on April 11, exactly 100 years after Titanic’s maiden voyage in the city where the doomed ship had been destined when it was holed by an iceberg off Newfoundland.

Guernsey’s described the auction as “historic,” saying it was “the first and only sale of objects that have been recovered from the wreck site of Titanic 2.5 miles (four kilometers) below the ocean’s surface.”

 

The auctioneers estimate the lot will sell for a whopping $189 million.

The items, a handful of which went on display Thursday, are a sometimes ghostly reminder of the 1,500 people who perished when the supposedly unsinkable White Star liner, sailing out of Southampton, England, went down.

Arlen Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s, said the collection had to remain as a single lot to “perpetuate the memory of this great ship” and “so that future generations will always have the opportunity to see it.”

 

The auction house said the sale “is subject to certain covenants and conditions to ensure the collection will be properly maintained and available for public display.”

Included are everything from shaving kits to children’s toys, tobacco pipes, and the brass buttons on the smart navy blue uniforms worn by Captain Edward Smith and his officers.

Hints of the glamorous life on board abound, such as crystal decanters from the first-class cabins, a battered chandelier from the A la Carte Restaurant, silver platters and blue-and-gold porcelain dishes.

 

Remnants of the great ship’s working parts will also be on the auction block. The compass monitored by watch officers in the wheelhouse is for sale, along with a running light, a trio of bronze whistles from a funnel, and a bell.

Among the most poignant objects is a well-preserved megaphone. The auctioneers say it may have been the one used by the captain as he directed the evacuation into lifeboats and gave his final command: “Abandon ship.”

Alex Klingelhofer, the vice president of Titanic Collections and a conservator, said Titanic immediately gripped the world’s imagination as a “floating city” and a ship “of dreams and hopes.” Carrying 2,200 people, it was at the time the largest moving object built.

 

When the ship sank, “what was a single tragic event has become one of the most significant events of the 20th century,” she said. “It still resonates with people today.”

The items were recovered in a series of expeditions since 1987 by a company called RMS Titanic, a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions, which creates museum and other exhibits.

Paul-Henry Nargeolet, head of underwater research for the company, recalled the discovery in 1987. When the team in a special submarine saw the wreckage, “we could not speak for 10 minutes.”

They saw “the most beautiful part of the ship… it was easy to imagine people living on it.”

Premier Exhibitions said it “intends to direct a portion of the proceeds generated by the sale to the Titanic Preservation Trust, an endowment fund created by the company for future conservation and maintenance of the artifacts removed from the wreck site.”


 

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Obama re-election driven by economy, turnout

Come BAck AGAIN

Obama re-election driven by economy, turnout

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Growing optimism about the economy and a big turnout of the core Democratic coalition sealed President Barack Obama's re-election victory.
After years of bleak economic news, enough Americans now believe better days lie ahead for the U.S. economy. The coalition of young, female and minority voters that propelled Obama to victory four years ago also turned out again, in huge numbers.
Early exit polls reflected a pro-Obama turnout by minorities and single women so big that in some key states it exceeded numbers seen during his historic election in 2008 as America's first black president.
Although Republican Mitt Romney did much better with independent voters than Obama on Tuesday, that advantage was wiped out in key battleground states by an enthusiasm Obama managed to engender among his core coalition that many analysts were writing off just a few months ago as dispirited and fractured.
In Pennsylvania, for example, African-American turnout exceeded 2008 levels, ABC News said. In Nevada, 18 percent of the voters were Latino - up from 15 percent in 2008, according to CNN.
That rapidly growing electoral bloc backed Obama overwhelmingly, as it appeared to be doing in Florida, one of the biggest prizes with its 29 electoral college votes. By Tuesday night, Florida - a state Romney had been confident of winning - was too close to call, but appeared to be heading toward an Obama victory.
Obama also opened up a large gender gap over Romney among women, several exit polls indicated.
"I thought four years ago there was an enduring Obama electorate, and that is what we've seen tonight," said Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic strategist.
"It's made up of African-Americans, Latinos, single women and young people," he said. "You combine that with blue-collar union workers and upper-educated whites, and you have a majority, especially in battleground states."
Devine added: "This coalition has legs. It reflects the demographic reality of America - the country is becoming less white, and there are more minorities and single people."
MANY VOTERS STILL BLAME BUSH
Romney also appeared to have overplayed his hand when it came to his central campaign argument that the U.S. economy was in dire straights because of Obama's bungled fiscal stewardship.
In politically divided states such as Virginia, Iowa and Ohio, Romney had an edge among voters who believed he would do a better job handling the economy - but only just. It was not enough for a candidate who made the economy central to his campaign.
As the night wore on, Romney's path to victory narrowed and was all but gone by 10 p.m. EST (0300 GMT Wednesday). State after battleground state he needed to win to get to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory fell to Obama: New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. By 11 p.m. EST, Obama had narrowly carried Ohio - and with it re-election.
Obama effectively swept the American Midwest, the county's industrial heartland.
Romney's efforts to convince voters that America's stubbornly high unemployment rate of 7.9 percent was all Obama's fault appeared to have backfired.
Early national exit polls revealed that about 50 percent of U.S. voters still blamed former Republican President George W. Bush for the country's economic problems rather than Obama.
Bill Galston, a former domestic policy adviser to Democratic President Bill Clinton, said Obama clinched victory because a range of economic factors improved in the past six months.
Galston said the jobless rate had been ticking downward, the housing market appeared to have stabilized with home prices finally rising, and consumer confidence had been improving.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in the week before the election reflected how voters' views of the economy had been improving steadily.
In October 2011, several months into Romney's candidacy, only one quarter of the country believed America was heading in the "right direction" - a key metric looked at by pollsters and a grave worry then for Obama's strategists.
By last week, that number had risen to 45 percent.


"The president's handling of the economy had to be the centerpiece of Romney's campaign," Galston said. "He had no choice. But all sorts of economic signs perked up in the past six months - and just in time for the president."
Yet Obama's victory in the face of such a high unemployment rate was remarkable given the historical winds he faced. No U.S. president has won re-election with an unemployment rate of over 7.2 percent since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.
No Republican has ever won the White House without victory in Ohio and the critical swing state was carried by Obama in large part because of his decision early in his presidency to bail out the bankrupt auto industry in neighboring Michigan.
In Ohio, where one in 8 jobs is tied to the auto industry, an overwhelming 59 percent of voters approved of the bailout - a move opposed by Romney at the time. Of that 59 percent, three quarters backed Obama in Ohio on Tuesday.
In Ohio, according to exit polls conducted by CNN, 37 percent of voters believed the economy was getting better, compared with 33 percent who thought things were getting worse.
In Virginia, 43 percent saw things improving, compared with 36 percent who believed life was going to get worse.
In those battleground states, and in others such as Colorado and Iowa, Obama enjoyed significant leads with voters on the question of who would best fight for the middle class and "people like us."
David Gergen, a political analyst and former adviser to two Democratic and two Republican presidents, said: "There is no doubt the president benefited from his economic policies. His auto bailout may have won Ohio and helped win key votes in the upper Midwest."
Gergen added: "Consumer confidence is also on the rise, inspired in part by cheery White House whisperings that success is just around the corner. Voters may have a rude disappointment, but they bought in during this election season."

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

Check out the first 10 members and how they knew Zuck >>

Check out the first 10 members and how they knew Zuck >>

                                iThinkShare

*A source close to the matter tells us user IDs were somewhat sequential but they were chunked up into per-school blocks up to 100,000 IDs. Harvard was the first chunk (0-99,999). My number is about 5,600,000, so its likely that Syracuse was roughly the 56th school on Facebook.

It's unclear when Zuckerberg opened up Facebook to the second school, so beyond those initial Harvard registrations, the number string following URLs may not be precise signup numbers, especially if a user joined Facebook outside of a college network.


1. Mark Zuckerberg

1. Mark Zuckerberg

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=4 (IDs 1-3 may have been associated with Zuckerberg but the profile pages no longer exist)

How he knew about Facebook: Zuckerberg founded Facebook.

2. Chris Hughes

2. Chris Hughes

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=5

How he knew about Facebook: Hughes cofounded Facebook and was college roommates with Zuckerberg.

3. Dustin Moskovitz

3. Dustin Moskovitz

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=6How he knew about Facebook: Moskovitz cofounded Facebook and was college roommates with Zuckerberg.

4. Arie Hasit

4. Arie Hasit

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=7How he knew about Facebook: Hasit was the first non-founder to sign up for Facebook. He was friends with early members David Hammer and Colin Jackson. Hammer knew Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes directly so its likely all three were friends.

5. Marcel Georgés Laverdet II*

5. Marcel Georgés Laverdet II*

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=10 (IDs 8 and 9 do not exist) 

How he knew about Facebook: *While Laverdet has one of the earliest IDs, it's not certain that he was one of the first 20 to sign up for the site.  Some engineers who worked at Facebook saw some early IDs were open and snagged them for themselves.

Since Laverdet didn't go to Harvard, that's presumably what happened here. Laverdet is, however, friends with early Facebookers Chris Putnam, Soleio Cuervo, Kang-Xing Jin, Chris Hughes, Mark Zuckerberg, and his buddies Adam D'Angelo and Aaron Sittig.

Putnam and Marcel both got jobs at Facebook by creating hacks and pranks on the social site. These hacks caught the attention of cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who contacted Putnam. The two kept in touch and when Putnam moved to Silicon Valley, Moskovitz offered him an interview at Facebook. When Putnam was hired, he encouraged Marcel to join the company too.

*He did not go to Harvard as originally stated. He went to LSU.

6. Soleio Cuervo

6. Soleio Cuervo

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=11

How he knew about Facebook: Cuervo was friends with early Facebook members Kang-Xing Jin (16) and Marcel George Laverdet (5).

He later worked at Facebook and was responsible for the "Like" Button.

7. Chris Putnam*

7. Chris Putnam*

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=13 (ID 12 does not exist) 

How he knew about Facebook: *While Putnam has one of the earliest IDs, it's not certain that he was one of the first 20 to sign up for the site.  Some engineers who worked at Facebook saw some early IDs were open and snagged them for themselves. Since Putnam didn't go to Harvard, that's presumably what happened here.Putnam was, however, friends with early Facebookers Kang-Xing Jin and Marcel George Laverdet. Putnam and Marcel both got jobs at Facebook by creating hacks and pranks on the social site. These hacks caught the attention of cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, who contacted Putnam. The two kept in touch and when Putnam moved to Silicon Valley, Moskovitz offered him an interview at Facebook.

8. Andrew McCollum

8. Andrew McCollum

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=26 (IDs 14-25 do not exist)

How he knew about Facebook: McCollum was a Harvard student who was in Mark Zuckerberg's CS161: Operating Systems class. He was also friends with early Facebook member David Hammer.

9. Colin Kelly

9. Colin Kelly

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=27

How he knew about Facebook: Kelly was a Harvard student who was friends with David Hammer and Colin Jackson. Both knew many early Facebookers and it's likely all of them were acquaintances.

10. Mark Kaganovich

10. Mark Kaganovich

Original Profile ID: http://www.facebook.com /profile.php?id=28

How he knew about Facebook: Kaganovich was a Harvard student who was also friends with early Facebooker David Hammer. Although Hammer joined Facebook after Kaganovich, Hammer knew at least 7 of the earliest Facebook members, and it's likely Kaganovich was acquaintances with many of them too.


Some of the first members were also the first employees. Check out:

Some of the first members were also the first employees. Check out:

The First 10 Facebook Employees: Where Are They Now????

Eleven-year-old Indian girl rated with highest IQ in the world

Eleven-year-old Indian girl rated with highest IQ in the world 

 On the face of it, she is no different from other children her age – she loves riding her bicycle, watching cartoons and playing her favourite games. But K. Vishalini of Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli isn’t your average 11-year-old.

Blessed with exceptional IQ, the Standard 8 student is an IT whiz kid who can come up with solutions to the trickiest of technical problems. Yes, she spends three hours a day learning about computers. But that is no big deal.

Vishalini has the highest IQ in the world, but she will be eligible for an entry in the Guinness only after she turns 14 (Photo: The Sunday Indian)

Vishalini has just returned home from an international seminar held at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), Mangalore, where she was a special guest. Such invitations are pretty routine for her these days.

Her syllabus has been wrapped up well in advance. So this child prodigy has the time to visit engineering colleges to deliver lectures to B.E. and B.Tech students on the intricacies of computer science.

At seminars, many an IT expert has been foxed by this chit of a girl who has answers to complex questions.

Her amazing achievements include cracking the Microsoft Certified Professional and Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) courses with ease.

Vishalini’s IQ is around 225. It is higher than that of the Guinness record holder, Kim Ung-Yong, whose IQ is around 210.

“She did not find a place in the Guinness Book because the minimum age requirement is 14 years,” says her electrician-father, Kumarasamy.

Vishalini’s mother, Ragamaliga, and the girl herself had to struggle to tide over a speech impairment that the latter suffered from as a small child. Today, Vishalini is a wonder girl that her parents can be immensely proud of.

An anchor with All India Radio at Tirunelveli, Ragamaliga says: "Vishalini’s speech impairment caused us great consternation.”

The irony was that the mother spoke incessantly on radio while the daughter had difficulty in articulating herself. “People would point that out to me all the time,” says Ragamaliga.

A local doctor came to her aid. “Dr Rajesh advised me to talk continuously to Vishalini in order to help her improve her speech ability,” says Ragamaliga.

She was preparing for her Group-1 exams at that point. So she began reciting questions and answers of the syllabus in front of her. “Moreover, I used to recite religious verses as well,” she adds.

“All this might have looked a little pointless but I persisted. Suddenly one fine morning, after nine months, Vishalini started speaking."

The girl’s parents heard of a boy who had secured admission in an engineering college after his Standard 8 exams.

"We approached Kalasalingam Engineering College. They asked us to bring a certificate from CCNA. Vishalini took the exam and got 90 per cent marks. It was a world record. She was only 10 years old. Earlier the youngest student to pass this exam was a 12-year-old boy from Pakistan, Irtaza Haider,” says Kumarasamy.

Both NITK of Mangalore and Kalasalingam Engineering College are now more than ready to welcome Vishalini. But her parents want the girl to enjoy her childhood for the next three years before thinking of entering a college campus.

Their only disappointment now is that the state and central governments have failed to recognise and appreciate Vishalini's extraordinary achievements.

Sunday, 4 November 2012

Twitter Plan to Upgrade by developing Instagram-style photo filters for its mobile apps

Twitter Plan to Upgrade by  developing Instagram-style photo filters for its mobile apps 

 Twitter's planning to introduce a set of Instagram-style photo filters to its mobile apps  in the coming months, according to a report from The New York Times.

 While Twitter hasn't gone on record about this forthcoming feature, it sounds like a direct response to Facebook's purchase of Instagram earlier this year, a service that has quickly become the de-facto social network for sharing images.

While Twitter and Instagram remain tightly integrated, Twitter would likely prefer its users to stay on its own platform for taking and sharing photos rather than using a Facebook-owned product for all of their photo-sharing needs. Facebook hasn't given any indication that it would start restricting the services that Instagram can plug into, but we'd imagine Twitter wouldn't be happy if it found itself cut off from the many millions of people using the service. While this is far from confirmed yet, it's a move that fits in with the ever-increasing amount of control Twitter wants over its platform.


After Sandy Storm Power slowly coming back to Lower Manhattan after four day blackout



After Sandy Storm Power slowly coming back to Lower Manhattan after four day blackout

100,000 in East Village, Lower East Side, and Chelsea see lights come back on






via cdn0.sbnation.com

 During sandy storm in LOWER MANHATTAN  People   LIVING without power.  Power has been restored to parts of the East Village and the Lower East Side, and the power company later confirmed  65,000 have power back. The area that's been restored was connected to the Cooper Square network, which is bounded by Canal Street on the south, Broadway on the west, 14th street on the north, and all the way to the East River. That still leaves many in Manhattan, as well as millions more in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the suburbs without power, but, considering the circumstances, it's a fairly quick recovery nonetheless.

Power was first taken offline in Lower Manhattan on Monday evening, after an approximately 14-foot storm surge flooded the southern part of the city, knocking out a few substations, including one on 14th Street. That substation was the site of a massive explosion after a circuit breaker failed, but the blackout was not caused by that incident — Con Ed says that higher than expected water levels rushing into the facility were to blame. The utility first estimated power would return to all of Lower Manhattan by Saturday evening, but current estimates say that all but 230,000 downtown will have power restored before tonight. Manhattan — which has all of its power lines underground — has only suffered four major blackouts since 1965.

Friday, 2 November 2012

Microsoft rips a page from Spotify's playbook to take on iTunes

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Microsoft rips a page from Spotify's playbook to take on iTunes

Xbox Music joins a growing list of streaming services that should have Apple worried

Headphones plus sync cable

Apple has been the king of the digital music world for most of the last decade, and its iTunes Store continues to dominate the online music industry despite recent challenges from Amazon and Google. The combination of a tightly-integrated storefront and killer hardware gave Apple a combination that other competitors were unable to match — but just as consumers started shifting from physical to digital media a decade ago, we're at the beginning of another sea change in music. Companies like Spotify, MOG, and Rdio have emerged over the last few years, offering the promise of all the music you can handle anywhere you go, for the same price each month that you'd pay iTunes for a mere ten songs.

While Apple hasn't yet mustered a response to this growing trend, sticking with its hugely successful virtual record store model, Microsoft just announced it's ready to take on the streaming competition. The new Xbox Music is an all-in-one service that's equal parts iTunes and Spotify — while Microsoft is keeping the same a la carte store that it has offered for years, it's augmenting that with an updated version of its Zune Pass streaming service. For the first time, Microsoft will offer free, ad-supported streaming to anyone using a Windows 8 PC — just like Spotify — or a Windows 8 or RT tablet. There's also a Pandora-style Smart DJ feature for making artist-specific "stations," and for $9.99 a month, users can access also sync music to their Windows Phone 8 device and Xbox 360.

We're at the beginning of another sea change in music

With this new service, Microsoft isn't directly trying to beat Apple — it's going after Spotify, Rdio, and all the rest of the streaming players out there. If Microsoft can be successful, Apple will be in the unfamiliar position of having to play catch-up in the digital music space for the first time. Success for Microsoft is far from assured — the company hasn't made much of a dent in the music world thus far — but it's hoping to use the strength of the Xbox brand, the ubiquity of the Xbox 360 console, and the wave of interest in its massive Windows 8 redesign to carve out a place of strength in the streaming world.

"We really wanted to build something from the ground up that solved a consumer problem," says Jerry Johnson, GM of Xbox Music. "It was clear to us that rebranding Zune doesn't solve the problem." Chief among the issues Johnson's team identified was the fragmented music experience many consumers have to deal with. Many music listeners have legacy collections of MP3s and also now use streaming services, sometimes more than one — Microsoft hopes to offer them a single experience that encompasses all listening options. Easier discovery and sharing of new music is another area that the company hopes to improve upon. "We wanted to do this with an all-in-one solution — music shouldn't be work, it should just work," Johnson says.

"Music shouldn't be work, it should just work."

Even though Microsoft hasn't met with much success selling songs and albums a la carte, the company still sees it as an important part of its offering. As Johnson told The Verge, the whole concept of Xbox Music is "consumer choice." With both streaming and purchase options, Johnson gave the example of users either shelling out cash to hear a new album immediately, or waiting a few days for it to show up as a streaming option. He rhetorically asked me whether the average consumer "should have to understand what a specific band or label decided to with how they released the music?" Answering his own question, Johnson says, "no — they should just be able to go and find it."

Xbox_music_enter_artist

With Xbox Music's free streaming option, the company is adopting nearly all of the main features Spotify offers. All of the major streaming services offer a free option where listeners are tethered to their desktop and must deal with ads or a limited quantity of music each month. Paid users can access that music pretty much anywhere they are, through desktop apps, the browser (in the case of Rdio, MOG, and eventually Xbox Music), and — most crucially — on a mobile phone. It doesn't hurt that many of these services plug right into Facebook, the dominant social platform of our age — it's now exceedingly easy to actively share music with your friends as well as see an ongoing stream of what those friends are listening to.

Social has long been an Achilles' heel for Apple

Social has long been an Achilles' heel for Apple, and iTunes continues to be no exception. As the software and store are based off an ownership model, users are not permitted to share songs with each other — the only built-in option is sharing links to songs in the iTunes Store via Facebook, Twitter, or email. Ping, Apple's recently-shuttered, first-party attempt at a social music service, was one of the company's most uninspired products and a perfect example of how out-of-touch Apple can be when it comes to the web. Sooner or later, that's going to have to change — if Apple ever launches a music service that isn't based on a la carte purchasing, social integration and easy sharing of music will need to be at the forefront, and the company hasn't yet really proved it's up to the task.

For its part, Microsoft is certainly not downplaying social, but nor is it going overboard at launch. "Sharing of music is very important," Johnson says, "and it's something we believe needs to be done in a measured and careful way." Specifically, Johnson's referring to "passive" sharing via the social graph and Facebook — "the hardcore group will like it if their friends are very much music enthusiasts, but you'll also hear a big group say they get very annoyed at the volume of things that flow through there." Xbox Music allows for active sharing via the Windows 8 charm bar, but passive sharing won't be implemented until next year. In addition to the "overshare," Johnson also wants to protect users who might not want to share their "guilty pleasure" listening habits to all of their friends on Facebook — though Johnson wasn't able to share how it'll overcome these pitfalls.

As important as those social hooks are, it's the integration with smartphones and tablets that really makes this generation of streaming, subscription services a viable option compared to their predecessors from the mid-2000s. For years, the vertically integrated iTunes and iPod combo was untouched by competition, but the launch of Apple's App Store in 2008 helped to break up this stranglehold. Finally, competing services had a way into Apple's hardware, which was previously locked down as tight as a bank. As iOS users now have a wide variety of music services to choose from, it seemed that Apple would have to offer streaming services of its own — but Apple's only move into the cloud has been iTunes Match.

Microsoft is gunning for all users, regardless of platform preference

Meanwhile, Microsoft already has plans to go after iOS and Android users as well as its Windows base with the planned launch of dedicated apps next year. "The feature sets aren't locked in those clients right now," Johnson says, but offering a quality, full-featured experience across all platforms is going to be important for Xbox Music's long-term success." While he couldn't commit to feature parity, Johnson says, "how we extend that experience out to iOS and Android is critical for our business." After using its free service to get a user "engaged in music," Johnson told us the next step is to let users take their music with them anywhere — and the focus on Android and iOS clients seems like a tacit admission that Microsoft isn't assuming everyone will be doing that with a Windows Phone device.


As important as the all-in-one service and Microsoft's cross-platform plans are, Johnson also repeatedly stressed the importance of international to Xbox Music — it's launching in 22 countries, with free streaming available in 15 of them. Streaming will be particularly important internationally — while streaming may not yet rule the US, there are a lot of countries where consumers have zero interest in buying music a la carte but have no issue with signing up for Spotify. Apple doesn't have an answer for those countries yet — but Microsoft does.

At the end of the day, Apple isn't ignoring this shift — reports are surfacing that Apple will have a new, streaming radio-style service ready in early 2013. And while people have expected Apple to tackle streaming for nearly three years, since its purchase of Lala in late 2009, it's obviously not a simple undertaking. "Building this type of all-in-one service with hundreds of deals in place was not a small task," says Johnson. He says it took Microsoft about 12 to 18 months of intense focus on building a brand new, integrated service, but he was also quick to mention that the company heavily leveraged its experience with Xbox Live and Zune. "The [Xbox Live] service components started in 2002, and Zune launched in 2008," Johnson says. "There's aspects of this related to building relationships with labels, creating content ingestion processes and things like that which started back with that.

Apple's most ancient rival has a bold new plan to outdo it

Apple certainly has similar experiences to draw from in creating its own streaming, all-in-one service of the future — the iTunes Store has been open for business since 2003. It also has much of the infrastructure that it needs, with last year's launch of iTunes purchases in the cloud and iTunes Match. And yet, Apple's faithful customers are still stuck with files and album purchases. In fact, it's entirely possible that the music industry is actively working against an Apple streaming service at this point. The company wielded unprecedented power for the better part of the 2000s as Apple drove the move towards paid, digital music — something the music labels desperately needed. Because of that desperation, the labels became a bit beholden to Apple, a situation that the labels are likely eager to avoid as the industry moves towards streaming. However, Apple's now at the mercy of those labels as it works to negotiate streaming rights, and it's likely that the labels are holding out for more control (or more money) this time around.

Regardless of the reasoning, there was no "one more thing"-style surprise relating to iTunes at Apple's iPad mini event last week; iTunes 11 still isn't available a month and a half after being announced. Apple had enough of a challenge on its hands fend off the Spotifys and Rdios of the world — but now, Apple's most ancient rival has a bold new plan to outdo it in the one space where the company was essentially unchallenged for so many years. The question now is whether or not Apple can muster up a response in the time it has before Windows 8 users are able to install Microsoft's Xbox Music app on their iPhones and iPads. The clock is officially ticking.

Thursday, 1 November 2012

Apple iOS 6.0.1 Update Now Available

Apple iOS 6.0.1 Update Now Available

Apple released an update to iOS 6.0, a fix that quashes a few bugs and gives the iPhone 5 the ability to receive wireless software updates.

To install the update to iOS 6.0.1, you can either launch iTunes and update your iPhone there, or update wireless. To do that, go to the Settings menu and tap “Software Update,” where iPhone 5 users will first be asked to download an updater for iPhone 5. This enables the wireless updates to be installed.


iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users who are already using iOS 6 can get the update by going to Settings, then General, then “Software Update.”

If you tap “Learn More” on either phone, a screen appears with the following text describing the bugs that have been fixed:

This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:

  • Fixes a bug that prevents iPhone 5 from installing software updates wirelessly over the air


  • Fixes a bug where horizontal lines may be displayed across the keyboard

  • Fixes an issue that could cause camera flash to not go off

  • Improves reliability of iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th generation) when connected to encrypted WPA2 Wi-Fi networks

  • Resolves an issue that prevents iPhone from using the cellular network in some instances

  • Consolidated the Use Cellular Data switch for iTunes Match

  • Fixes a Passcode Lock bug which sometimes allowed access to Passbook pass details from lock screen

  • Fixes a bug affecting Exchange meetings

When you want to download and install the update, after a quick user agreement confirmation, the update begins. We especially like the animated gears turning while the update downloads.

The most noticeable of these bugs for us is the one that causes strange static and horizontal lines going across the screen when we’ve downloaded a new app and are asked to type our Apple password.

For me, this is a relief. I thought that static going across the keyboard might have something to do with the fact that I’ve dropped my iPhone 5 three times already (and yes, the iPhone is now safely ensconced in a case).

How about you? Have you noticed any of the above bugs?

Bonus Gallery: iPhone 5 cases

 

Halo 4′ Soundtrack Has Record-Setting Debut

 

Halo 4′ Soundtrack Has Record-Setting Debut

                            iThinkShare

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The soundtrack to the highly-anticipated Halo 4 debuted at number 50 on the Billboard chart this week — the highest spot ever for a video game soundtrack.
The Halo 4 soundtrack sold 9,000 copies in its first week, putting it at number 50 on the U.S. Billboard 200 charts. It also debuted at number three on the Billboard Soundtracks chart and number nine on the independent albums chart.
Halo 4‘s soundtrack was produced by Neil Davidge, co-producer of electronic group Massive Attack.
Just as Halo moved to a new developer, from Bungie to 343 Industries, this was Davidge’s first time working on Halo‘s scor
It was an honor to compose and produce the ‘Halo 4’ score,” said Davidge. “I am so proud of the way the OST has turned out and to have had the opportunity to evolve the great legacy of ‘Halo’ music.”
It comes out a week before the newest tale in the Halo saga, which has already sold 1.17 million copies just through preorder.
Previous Halo soundtracks also performed well on the Billboard charts; Halo 2 reached number 12 on the Soundtracks chart in 2004. That soundtrack also holds the sales record for a game for copies sold in one week.
Previously, the only game soundtrack to make it on the Billboard 200 was Guitar Hero III

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