A lesson learned from the death of HD-DVD: it's all about content. And on Wednesday Amazon.com announced a deal with Viacom that will raise the number of titles available in its Prime Instant Videos service to over 15,000. That would be three times the number of titles the service launched with.
The deal will give Amazon Prime members the ability to instantly stream (hence the name, Prime Instant Videos) television shows from MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT and Logo.
Amazon Prime is one of the company's cash cows. For $79 annually, Prime members have always gotten free two-day shipping on most items (those sold or fulfilled by Amazon.com) as well as lower-cost upgraded one-day shipping. In addition they have access to Prime Instant Videos, which are a subset of the video selections available from Amazon.com's Amazon Instant Video.
In addition, Prime members who are also Kindle owners get access to the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, from which they can borrow books as frequently once a month, with no due dates.
The additional content brings Amazon.com's video selection and its service closer toward directly competing with Netflix. It's also been rumored that Amazon.com might split the Prime Instant Video service away from its Prime service, meaning you could get it without a Prime subscription.
It's not clear, however, if a split would be all that great a move. At $79 annually, it's already cheaper than Netflix' streaming-only service.
Market research firm The NPD Group issued a new report on the state of the U.S. mobile market for Q4 2011, and it echoed prior reports: Apple and the iPhone had a huge quarter. While that was interesting, there's something more interesting in the report: Android attracted a lot of first-time smartphone buyers.
The report echoes earlier ones by Nielsen and comScore. These reports all note how the iPhone's recent sales, in Q4, were huge after the introduction of the iPhone 4S. However, Android continues to assert its lead, overall, in all these reports.
The top three handsets in the U.S. for Q4 2011 were the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 4, and the iPhone 3GS in that order.
Ross Rubin, executive director, Connected Intelligence for The NPD Group said,
"Attracted by a faster processor, improved camera and the Siri speech-driven agent, most iPhone buyers paid a premium for the iPhone 4S, making it the top-selling handset in Q4. The iPhone 4S outsold the iPhone 4 by 75 percent, and outsold the iPhone 3GS, available for free on AT&T, five to one."
It should not be considered huge news that the iPhone in 3 variant were the top sellers. Android has never had a single handset that compares with iPhone-ish numbers (though Samsung's devices are starting to show real uptake), yet Google's platform has overall market lead because of a number of devices with varying form factors and styles. The Galaxy S II and Galaxy S 4G were No. 4 and No. 5 on the list of top sellers.
And that is correct: Android continues to hold overall market share lead, with 48 percent of smartphone buyers opting for Android during Q4 2011, while 43 percent selected iOS. Among first-time smartphone buyers, a burgeoning group, 57 percent chose an Android handset vs. an estimated 34 percent who chose an iPhone.
That's interesting because Android has been criticized for being more technical, something requiring more experienced users because of its relative complexity compared to iOS. Some of that translates to extreme power, such as with apps like Tasker, but it has been said to dissuade new users.
Rubin noted the new user uptake, saying:
“Android has been criticized for offering a more complex user experience than its competitors, but the company’s wide carrier support and large app selection is appealing to new smartphone customers. Android’s support of LTE at Verizon has also made it the exclusive choice for customers who want to take advantage of that carrier’s fastest network.”
The iPhone has yet to adopt LTE, though it is expected that this year's iPhone 5 will have LTE connectivity on both AT&T and Verizon, and perhaps even Sprint, which has begun transitioning from WiMax to LTE.
A recent report in The New York Times described the human cost of the electronics we received from factories in China, including iPads and iPhones. While such conditions are not exclusive to Apple, with its position as the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization, the Cupertino-based company is a large target for activists.
On Thursday, protesters around the world plan to descend on Apple stores. Included in the protests will be the presentation of a petition signed by 250,000 people, which asks the company to develop a worker protection strategy in response to reported abuse in Chinese supplier factories. Among the stores to see a petition delivery will be Apple's new Grand Central Terminal store, at 10 a.m. EST.
Mark Shields created the petition on Change.org. He said, “I have been a lifelong Apple customer and was shocked to learn of the abusive working conditions in many of Apple’s supplier factories. At Foxconn, one of Apple’s biggest manufacturers, there is a history of suicides, abusive working conditions, and almost no pay. These working conditions are appalling, especially for Apple.”
Other petition deliveries will take place at Apple stores in Washington, D.C.; New York City; San Francisco; London; Sydney, Australia; and Bangalore, India.
After the NYT expose, Apple CEO Tim Cook defended the company’s policies, sending an e-mail to employees last month in which he said, " We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don't care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It's not who we are."
Apple may have said that however, but the suicides at Foxconn as well as the explosion that took place at Foxconn's Chengdu facility in 2011 seem to belie that. However, despite the protests, consumers are at least partly to blame for the conditions at the factories. As a current Apple exec said to the NYT, speaking anonymously,
"You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards. And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China."
How many times has it been demonstrated that it's a bad idea to have simplistic passwords like "12345?" To be honest, too many times to count. Yet here we have another example, and this one is one from a place that should know better: the office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Hackers affiliated with the loosely-knit hacktivist group Anonymous attacked the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs on Sunday night. The group said they managed to break into 78 email inboxes, including those belonging to Assad's media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, and that of the Minister of Presidential Affairs Mansour Fadlallah Azzam.
Hundreds of email messages were exposed. Also exposed were the weakness of the security among the email accounts. There were 78 email accounts hacked, and 31 of them had the "password" "12345." A number of other passwords minor variations on that theme. Among the other passwords among those hacked were:
iloveyou
123vivasyria
system
honda2011
testing
Security experts recommend that passwords not be real words, and that they contain numbers and special characters such as %, $, or ^. Annoyingly, some systems do not allow anything other than numbers and letters --- still.
Naturally, the longer the password, the better.
In November, SplashData's annual list of most commonly used passwords showed that "password" was the most popular, followed by "123456" and "12345678."
How many times has it been demonstrated that it's a bad idea to have simplistic passwords like "12345?" To be honest, too many times to count. Yet here we have another example, and this one is one from a place that should know better: the office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Hackers affiliated with the loosely-knit hacktivist group Anonymous attacked the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs on Sunday night. The group said they managed to break into 78 email inboxes, including those belonging to Assad's media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, and that of the Minister of Presidential Affairs Mansour Fadlallah Azzam.
Hundreds of email messages were exposed. Also exposed were the weakness of the security among the email accounts. There were 78 email accounts hacked, and 31 of them had the "password" "12345." A number of other passwords minor variations on that theme. Among the other passwords among those hacked were:
iloveyou
123vivasyria
system
honda2011
testing
Security experts recommend that passwords not be real words, and that they contain numbers and special characters such as %, $, or ^. Annoyingly, some systems do not allow anything other than numbers and letters --- still.
Naturally, the longer the password, the better.
In November, SplashData's annual list of most commonly used passwords showed that "password" was the most popular, followed by "123456" and "12345678."
Name: Phoebe Hui 許穎 Date of Birth: Feb 3, 1989 Height: 171 cm Measurements: 34D 24 35 Weibo:http://www.weibo.com/phoebedreamy Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/pages/許穎-PhoebeDreamy/168159156566802 About: Phoebe Hui 许颖 is a model from Hong Kong of Chinese and Japanese descent (her mother is a Japanese). Phoebe is often referred to as "Kot Girl" (葛女郎) after director-actor Eric Kot (葛民辉) handpicked her to be the image girl for his clothing line 4A. The 34D-cup model was previously only known in Hong Kong until June 2011 where a series of publicity stunts were carried out. She was seen shopping at an underwear storewearing only a bra and hot pants. Occassionally, she would bent down to show off her ample cleavage.
In late June 2011, naked photos of herself were leaked after she lost her mobile phone in a shopping mall. While some assume that this is just a plot to gain publicity, Phoebe Hui denied the rumour. When quizzed, she admitted that she was model in the photos and said, "They are pretty! Better do it when I'm young. Hope the public doesn't think too much of it. Many foreign female celebrities do the same!"
This busty model is signed under Charlie's Management talent agency and often spins at the clubs as DJ Phoebe Dreamy. Definitely seems like a trend in Hong Kong to use sexy celebrity models to spin up the guys' attention. What do you feel about using women's sexuality as a marketing gimmick?
Recent Comments