With Apple retail stores, carriers, and other retailers taking delivery of their launch-day iPhone 5 stocks overnight last night, hundreds of the units have been stolen in several incidents on opposite sides of the globe. While security is tight at Apple's own retail stores where staff were on hand all night to set up window displays and demo units, carriers whose retail stores were left unattended during the night have been the primary target for thieves.
The Wall Street Journal reports that a total of 191 units were stolen from three separate shops run by carrier partners KDDI and Softbank in the Osaka area in Japan. Police have not confirmed that the burglaries are connected and are still investigating security footage and other evidence. The majority of the stolen units came from a Softbank outlet that was cleaned out of its entire stock of iPhone 5 units.[A] Softbank Corp store in the western district of Osaka city was wiped clean of its iPhone 5 stock. All 116 devices were stolen, including one store display. The police said they were taken from the locked backroom within a four minute span from 4:24 a.m. as shown on security camera footage. The video recording also showed there were three culprits, all likely to be male. The police said it is uncertain whether the robbery is related to the incident in Ibaraki, located about 20 minutes away by car.In the United Kingdom, The Independent reports that over 250 iPhone 5 units were stolen from an O2 shop in London in what appears to have been an inside job.Officers want to speak to Usman Sethi, 23, of Audley Gardens, Ilford, east London, who works as an assistant at the store.
The phones were taken at 1.30am, with a quantity of cash which was also stolen from the shop's safe. [...]
Police also want to speak to Mr Sethi, a Pakistani national, in connection with the theft of jewellery belonging to a family member from his home address in Audley Gardens.At a median selling price of £599, the 252 stolen iPhones would be valued at approximately £150,000 or nearly $250,000. read more..
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Security Camera Footage-Apple Retail Stores-Iphone 5
Discovery Networks Is Brightcove’s First Partner For Its Dual-Screen Apple TV Service, Live First In Italy
Back in June, Brightcove unveiled a new strategy to take its App Cloud development platform open source, and at the same time it introduced a new dual-screen Apple TV feature aimed at growing its business on connected TVs. Today, Brightcove is announcing the very first implementation of that, with Discovery Networks International, which will be using it first in Italy. Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Brightcove, tells TechCrunch that this is a global deal with Discovery, meaning that if all goes well, Discovery could take the features to other markets where it operates in Europe, the U.S. and the rest of the world.The new service will run on iPad and iPhone apps from DMAX Italy, a free-to-air channel operated by Discovery with 20 million subscribers. And it will give users the ability to initiate an action on, say, an iPhone or iPad, and then shift that content directly on to the larger screen of the TV using Apple's AirPlay technology. This makes dual-screen functionality a step beyond companion apps -- now very common in the TV world -- in that it gives users the ability to actually port features and functions from one screen directly to the other. read more..
Friday, 28 September 2012
Juergen Teller-Belstaff
Dînatoire? What's a dînatoire? It was the question of the night in Milan,with a pair of overlapping dinners celebrating Belstaff's new store andJuergen Teller's latest exhibition The Girl With the Broken Nose.Dînatoire, it turns out, is a fancy word for buffet. But the virtue ofthese parties was their casual,drop-in-and-stuff-yourself-silly-with-prosciutto-and-prosecco vibes. AtDal Bolognese, we learned that Martin Cooper, the man who rebuiltBelstaff with its new owner Harry Slatkin in, oh, about a minute, hasnever, not even once, been on a motorcycle. "If I become a real biker, itmay blow the fantasy," he said. The revelation at the party Moschinohosted for Teller at Da Giacomo Arengario was the photographer's garb.Famous for wearing nylon running shorts everywhere, including to thebrand's fashion show this morning, he was sporting long pants for once.Why? He had his mum with him.
—Nicole Phelps read more..
Monday, 24 September 2012
Compatible Devices-Chitika-Ios
While this is based upon info taken from people using Chitika's service, we've found overall trends are quite nicely tracked by this data. The latest report says that a full 15 percent of eligible iPhones, iPod touches and iPads are already running iOS 6. Considering it was released just yesterday? That's impressive. As TechCrunch points out, after two months of Jelly Bean (the latest Android OS) availability, Google has seen an adoption rate of only 1.5%. Apple customers are a little quicker to react and install whenever a new iOS appears, it seems. Of course, considering iOS 6 was Apple's first full version update over the air (5.0.1 saw the debut of OTA updates), adoption is likely that much faster as a result.Ad network Chitika reports iOS 6 on 15% of compatible devices originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments read more..
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Bingo Simulator-Ipad App Store-Ipad Devices
If you had to take a guess at what has been at or near the top-grossing spot in the U.S. iPad App Store for the past month without looking, I'd bet a bingo simulator wouldn't be high on your list. But India's BitRhymes has proven that in fact users are interested in playing good old-fashioned bingo on their ultra-modern iPad devices, and revealed to TechCrunch that it's currently tracking to realize an annual run rate of $45 million in revenue on the back of its premiere title, Bingo Bash for Facebook, iPad and iPhone.That one of the best-performing social games on the App Store and Facebook right now isn't from someone like Zynga is a sign that there's still plenty of opportunity to be had in this space, but that it might be best explored by peering into corners that don't immediately seem like winners. Bingo is traditionally seen as a game for octogenarians, but BitRhymes' CEO Sumit Gupta said in an interview that surprisingly, there's been lots of interest from younger demographics, and users have predominantly been women. read more..
Saturday, 15 September 2012
Party Monster-Forrest Gump-Karlie Kloss-Frank Ocean-Party Favor
Joan Smalls' favorite track on Frank Ocean's Channel Orange is "Forrest Gump." Karlie Kloss likes "Thinkin Bout You" best. They were the two songs that Ocean performed at J. Mendel's party last night, perched on a stool literally inches from the girls. The models were in heaven. So was everyone else with the good fortune to be on hand for a surprise performance by the man with the album of the year. So how did it happen? Gilles Mendel knew Ocean was in town for SNL so he asked him. Simple. The designer was a hands-in-the-air-like-he-just-don't-care party monster with his gorgeous gazelle of a girlfriend, Kylie Case, who gives La Kloss a run for her money in the tall-gal sweepstakes. Five generations of Mendels built the family business in Paris. Then Gilles flipped operations to New York. Now he's on a mission to reintroduce J. Mendel to the French. "It's a bizarre, exciting moment," he enthused. I think he was talking about his business, but his words worked just as well for his party.
When designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez finally made their way to Irving Place for their own post-show shindig, it was hugs and high-fives all around. "We're ready to blow off a little steam," McCollough told Style.com, trying on one of the black baseball caps with cat embroidery that everyone received as a party favor. "We've been in the office a lot, so now we're going to have our belated summer." Boys, those extra hours paid off. "Every item was special, but I loved it as a collective," Kate Bosworth said. "It felt very edited and precise."
The Proenza bash started winding down around 1 a.m., but late nighters were still going strong at Magnus Berger and Tenzin Wild's The Last Magazine bash at the new Pink Elephant. Watching Phillip Lim, Prabal Gurung, and Richard Chai on the dance floor, off-duty DJ Chelsea Leyland said, "My phrase for the night: Hashtag don't go home."
—Tim Blanks and Kristin Studeman read more..
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Gift Certificates-Profitability-Startup
GiftRocket, a 2011 Y Combinator grad, is a simple P2P digital gifting service that lets users send and receive digital gift cards via email. Originally, the startup was focused around location-based gifting, allowing friends to send each other digital gift cards that could be accessed once they checked-in to a certain location. With some angel funding behind it, the startup pivoted to a more universal use case, becoming a way to easily gift cash within a digital eCard.Co-founder Kapil Kale tells us that, since that change, people have begun to use the service as a replacement for traditional gift cards and gift certificates and usage has increased as a result. Today, the startup is announcing that it's profitable thanks to a $2 million in sales in 2012 (and what he expects to be $5 million run rate by December). It's also making some additions and changes to its service, including an API, bulk orders and reduced fees. read more..
Unconditional Clearance-Mobile Payments-Vodafone
A mobile payment joint venture from the UK's biggest carriers, first announced over a year ago, today finally received "unconditional" clearance from European regulators. The move means that now Vodafone, Telefonica's O2 and Everything Everywhere (the JV from T-Mobile and Orange) can proceed developing a cross-carrier mobile payments platform -- not unlike the Isis initiative in the U.S. They say they will be getting the service "up and running as quickly as possible," although no launch dates or other specifics -- including a name -- have been announced. In other words, now the hard work begins.Given that one of the biggest pain points in mobile payments has been lack of interoperability between platforms, this is potentially a big step in helping such services grow: the idea is that with a bigger potential audience to serve, bigger merchants, banks, payment providers, developers and handset makers will be more likely to make the necessary investments in infrastructure themselves. read more..
Tuesday, 4 September 2012
Silicon Valley Startups-Entrepreneurs-Campaigns-Steli-Sins
Editor's note: Steli is the Co-Founder / Chief Hustler of ElasticSales and an advisor to several startups and entrepreneurs. You can follow Steli on Twitter here.At ElasticSales, we’ve had the honor to create and run sales campaigns for some of the hottest Silicon Valley startups today. We’ve also consulted with dozens more each week to learn the challenges their sales team face. We realize we can’t work with every startup just yet, but we have seen the same, avoidable mistakes made by many young companies as they conduct their sales campaigns.Below are “7 Deadly Sales Sins” committed by many startups today. Some of these may sound familiar to you, but by identifying and address these mistakes, you will help your company succeed. read more..
Monday, 3 September 2012
Productivity Apps-The Killer Apps-Windows 8-Microsoft
Love it or hate it, but Windows 8 will soon arrive on computers around you. While virtually all of your old programs will likely run without a hitch in desktop mode, it's the Windows 8 Metro interface (or whatever Microsoft now wants to call it), that brings the biggest changes to the OS for users and developers alike. What Microsoft really needs right now more than anything else, though, is applications that can showcase the power of the new Windows 8 user interface. The current crop of apps in the Windows Store is a hodgepodge of games, travel and productivity apps that, for the most part, look fine but aren't very interesting (and that includes Microsoft's own default apps for Windows 8 Metro). What's still missing is a few killer apps for Windows 8 Metro that will get consumers interested in the platform. read more..
Sunday, 2 September 2012
Recovery Solutions-Social Networking-Google Apps
Editor's note: Rob May is the CEO and co-founder of Backupify, the leading provider of backup and recovery solutions for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications.Google recently announced that it will begin offering corporate control features for its Google+ social network to businesses for free -- at least for a while. If you run a Google Apps domain, you can set up domain-wide restrictions on how your users interact with Google+. Your users can also make "restricted" posts to Google+ which are visible only to members of your domain. It's social networking, but with corporate oversight.That's sounds a lot like Yammer (which Microsoft recently bought for $1.2 billion) and Salesforce Chatter: Sharing streams designed for employee collaboration rather than personal socialization. It sounds less like Facebook, the undisputed heavyweight in social networking that Google+ was supposedly intended to depose. read more..
Diagnostics Software-Prototype
As noted by 9to5Mac, an early iPhone 4 prototype has shown up on eBay running Apple's in-house diagnostics software.
A number of high-quality photos are included with the listing, showing a complete lack of Apple branding on the exterior of the device. Most notably, the Apple logo has been replaced with a distinct logo that was previously seen in a Twitpic posting in February 2010. The standard "iPhone" text on the rear of the device has also been replaced by "Prototype", along with text noting that the device has not been approved by the Federal Communications Commission and can not be sold until such authorization is granted.
Sonny Dickson has also provided an overview video of the device showing off several of the features of the device including the software and a lack of screws on the bottom of the device that is consistent with some of the earlier leaked prototypes.
As seen in the video, the serial number of the device indicates that it was manufactured during the 43rd week of 2009, which corresponds to late October, nearly eight months before the device was made available to the public.
The auction for the prototype currently carries a single bid of $4,500, with the seller advertising in the listing that a $10,000 offer would be acceptable to halt the auction process and simply purchase the device.
Update: The listing has been removed. read more..
Friday, 31 August 2012
Facebook-Ios
Facebook has released a completely rewritten iOS app that is significantly faster than the prior version. With more and more Facebook users accessing the social network via mobile, the company views having a fast mobile app as increasingly essential. News that the update was forthcoming was first reported back in June.
With the updated version, Facebook's engineers have dumped the HTML5-based app and rebuilt it using Objective-C programming to make it perform more like a native iOS app. From All Things D:
“People have different expectations when it comes to using Facebook for iOS,” Mick Johnson, Facebook iOS mobile product manager, told me in an interview this morning. “They expect a level of performance and speed that just wasn’t there.”
Johnson says that the largest pain points — scrolling through the feed, photos and loading the app — will all be much faster, by a factor of three. Also, Facebook mobile developers working on the three separate iOS apps — Facebook, Camera and Messenger — all all now sharing a code base with each other, so Messenger and Camera are actually running inside of the proper Facebook app, bringing many of those features to Facebook for iOS. (As a bonus, a shared code base means faster development cycles, so we’ll probably see improvements sooner.)Facebook for iPhone is available free via the App Store. [Direct Link] read more..
Aalto University In Finland-Windows Phone-Microsoft-Incubator-Nokia
Next week Nokia and Microsoft are expected to unveil the first handset(s) running on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 platform, and today comes news about the apps they hope will lure in more users to buy them. AppCampus, an $23 million (€18 million) JV between Microsoft, Nokia and Aalto University in Finland, first announced in May, to foster more app development on the platform, said it has doled out the first $1 million-plus of their budget on 36 developers out of a total of 900 submissions, an average of $30,000 per app, although individual investments over the course of the JV will be between $25,000 and $88,000.Pekka Sivonen, Head of AppCampus, tells me the apps are expected to be coming out starting in October, and will run exclusively on Windows Phone and "other Nokia platforms" for their first six months -- potentially touching some 500 million devices out in the market today. read more..
Thursday, 30 August 2012
Windows Applications-Parallels Desktop-Internet Explorer-Google Chrome Os-Mountain Lion
Parallels announced the availability of Parallels 8 upgrades for the Mac for existing Parallels Desktop customers. Parallels 8 is the latest version of their virtualization software that allows Mac users to run other operating systems, such as Windows, alongside OS X. “People don’t need to make an either/or choice between Mac and Windows because Macs running Parallels Desktop 8 empower people to simultaneously use applications that best suit their needs – regardless of whether it’s an app for OS X, Windows, Google Chrome OS, Ubuntu, or even Android,” said Parallels CEO Birger Steen.
New features in Parallels 8 includes OS X Mountain Lion integration as well as Retina support and performance boosts:- Speak, don’t type – Use the new Mountain Lion Dictation tool across both Windows and Mac environments
- Open in Internet Explorer – When a website doesn’t render well within Safari, launch it in Internet Explorer with a click of a button
- Parallels Wizard – Download and automatically install Windows or other operating systems (OSes) including Google Chrome OS, Ubuntu and Android on your Mac.
- Windows apps on OS X Launchpad – Add Windows applications to the Mountain Lion or Lion Launchpad to quickly launch Mac and Windows applications used most
- Consolidated notifications – Integration of Windows notifications into the Mac OS X Notification Center makes it easy to stay updated on Windows virtual machine operations
- Mountain Lion gestures for Windows apps – Enjoy seamless integration of Mountain Lion gestures with Windows apps such as pinch to zoom, Mission Control, three-finger drag, swipe between full-screen apps, two-finger scroll, Launchpad and rotate
- Retina display support – Enjoy stunning Retina display resolution in Windows OS and Windows applications to see crisper fonts, vivid photos, images and animations
- Improved Parallels Desktop 8 performance - up to 30 percent faster for input/output (I/O) operations, 30 percent faster for games and up to 25 percent faster for virtual machine operations such as boot, suspend, shutdown and resume, when compared to Parallels Desktop 7 for MacParallels 8 will be available starting today as an upgrade for existing Parallels Desktop users. (Parallels' website not showing version 8 at time of publication) Upgrades are priced at $49.99.
The full version will become available for $79.99 both online and in retail stores starting on September 4th. C ustomers who purchased Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac on or after July 25, 2012, are eligible for a free upgrade. read more..
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Mountain Lion Os X
Earlier this month, Arstechnica had reported that many users had found a significant decrease in battery life after upgrading to OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). Ars writer Chris Foresman, after extended testing, discovered that the battery life of his Retina MacBook Pro review unit dropped 38% from its previous 8-hours.The same findings were reported by many others in Apple's own support forums, and there were some reports that the development versions of OS X 10.8.1 may have addressed this issue.
MacObserver has conducted battery life tests on the final release build of OS X 10.8.1 to see if there had indeed been any improvement. Their testing process included using an Automator script that launched several apps and navigated to websites. The script would cycle this process continuously. The tests were run on a 2011 Macbook Pro. Here are their findings:
First, they were able to confirm the drop in battery life when going from OS X 10.7.4 to OS X 10.8. The drop they measured was 33% (2 hours and 10 minutes) just from upgrading OS X to 10.8. The "No WiFi Icon" was a "fix" of suggested by one of their readers, but showed no appreciable effect. They did find that OS X 10.8.1 (beta and release) builds did improve the battery life stats, adding as much as 52 minutes in their testing. The overall numbers, however, are still well under their battery life measurements in OS X 10.7.4 (Lion).
Apple is currently testing OS X 10.8.2, but there's been no word if that build helps further improve battery times back towards OS X Lion levels. read more..
Java Runtime Environment-Latest Version Of Java-Security Vulnerability-Oracle
Just two weeks after Oracle officially took over responsibility for Java on OS X with the launch of Java SE 7 Update 6, a new Java vulnerability has been discovered to pose a significant threat to systems running the software. Krebs on Security highlighted the issue yesterday, noting that it affects all versions of Java 7 on most browsers.News of the vulnerability (CVE-2012-4681) surfaced late last week in a somewhat sparse blog post by FireEye, which said the exploit seemed to work against the latest version of Java 7, which is version 1.7, Update 6. This morning, researchers Andre’ M. DiMino & Mila Parkour published additional details on the targeted attacks seen so far, confirming that the zero-day affects Java 7 Update 0 through 6, but does not appear to impact Java 6 and below.
Initial reports indicated that the exploit code worked against all versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera, but did not work against Google Chrome. But according to Rapid 7, there is a Metasploit module in development that successfully deploys this exploit against Chrome (on at least Windows XP).The report notes that Oracle is moving to a quarterly update cycle for Java, meaning that the next regularly-scheduled update to Java SE 7 is not planned until October, but it is unclear how quickly the company will move to address the issue. In the interim, some security experts are developing an unofficial patch while users are advised to simply disable Java if they do not need it active on their systems.
Computerworld reports that the issue does indeed affect fully-updated Macs running Java 7 on top of OS X Mountain Lion.David Maynor, CTO of Errata Security, confirmed that the Metasploit exploit -- which was published less than 24 hours after the bug was found -- is effective against Java 7 installed on OS X Mountain Lion.
"This exploit works on OS X if you are running the 1.7 JRE [Java Runtime Environment]," said Maynor in an update to an earlier blog post.
JRE 1.7 includes the most-current version of Java 7, dubbed "Update 6," that was released earlier this month.Both Safari 6 and Firefox 14 have been found to be vulnerable to the issue on OS X systems.
Apple has of course had its own issues with Java vulnerabilities, most recently with the Flashback malware that was able to infect over 600,000 Macs by taking advantage of an exploit in Java 6 that had already been patched by Oracle for most platforms but not by Apple for OS X. It is due to smaller, previous incidents similar to Flashback that Apple had already been moving to shift responsibility for Java updates to Oracle, a move that is taking place with Java 7. But while Mac users will now receive Java updates simultaneously with users on other platforms, Java remains one of the highest-profile targets for attackers seeking to compromise systems on a broad basis.
Update: CNET noted earlier today that most Mac users are not currently susceptible to the issue, as Java 7 is not installed by default on Macs. The current version of Java installed on Mac remains Java 6 for the time being, so users would have to have manually updated to Java 7 in order for their systems to be vulnerable. read more..
Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Professional Music Producers-Electronic Music Producer-Software Programs-Paul Oakenfold
Historically there's been a pretty high barrier to entry when it comes to making electronic music. The standard tools used to create beats are software programs things like Traktor and Ableton Live, desktop programs aimed at professional music producers that have tons of complicated features (and pricetags that start in the hundreds of dollars.) They're great tools for pros, but they're still not exactly beginner friendly. That's where Beatlab, a San Francisco startup run by Jonathan Baudanza, has come in with a much more lightweight and low maintenance option. And this week, the site is having its first brush with the big time: Beatlab is partnering with famed electronic music producer and DJ Paul Oakenfold to hold a remix contest. read more..
Saturday, 25 August 2012
Intellectual Exercise-Iphone-Video
The developer of the iPhone game Ninja Fish has released a video showing what the game would look like on a next-generation iPhone with a taller screen. The developer doesn't have any special information about the next iPhone, but is sharing the video as an intellectual exercise to show how games could look on the larger screen.
Ninja Fish for iPhone is available in both a free, ad-supported version and a $0.99 paid version from the App Store. read more..
Vmware
VMware on Thursday morning announced the launch of Fusion 5, the latest generation of the popular and well-reviewed app that lets users run Windows on their Mac computers. read more..