Ringing in 2013 properly requires a few things: bottom-shelf champagne, “I survived the apocalypse” t-shirts, excessive sequins and — most importantly — New Year’s resolutions that may or may not last beyond February.
[More from Mashable: These Are the Worst Case Scenarios for New Year’s Eve]
You promise to lose weight or quit smoking or stop stalking your ex on Facebook, but what about those people that shoot for a slightly different goal in the new year? Sometimes these resolution-makers come up with brilliant challenges and other times — well, ummm — they share goals that are more “WTF?” than an adult dressed like the New Year’s baby.
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BONUS: 14 Solutions to Your New Year’s Midnight Kiss
There’s got to be one crawling around somewhere. What’s cuter than kissing a baby’s fat cheek? Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
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Image Credit: Mashable composite. Photos via iStockphoto, Adventure_photo and Seanicer
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Ages 3-up Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars Why we like it: Fun, fast and good for building emerging math skills, Bugs and Bubbles contains 18 leveled sorting, classification games set in Uncle Bob’s Bubble Factory. The goal is to collect stickers by harvesting bubbles, requiring kids to apply skills of counting, sorting and remembering patterns in an elegant fashion. Need to know: The better you do, the greater the challenge, and progress can be saved over time on different devices. Watch a video review of this app here. Ease of use: 10/10 Educational: 10/10 Entertaining: 10/10 $ 2.99
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[More from Mashable: 7 Bad Moves That Hurt Facebook in 2012]
Chris Crowell is a veteran kindergarten teacher and contributing editor to Children’s Technology Review, a web-based archive of articles and reviews on apps, technology toys and video games. Download a free issue of CTR here.
While you’re at the grownup table this holiday season, the kids could be eating their vegetables and sitting quietly — what’s more likely is they’ll be playing on their smart devices.
[More from Mashable: 40 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed]
So we’ve rounded up the best 5 games that were included in this year’s Top 5 Kids Apps. All these games are not only a lot of fun, they’re also educational for your kids. The top game, Bugs and Bubbles, got 5 stars out of 5 for its perfect mix of entertainment and math teaching. There’s also room for pure fun with games like Build and Play and Rush Hour.
SEE ALSO: Mobile Apps Under Scrutiny: Is Your Kid’s Privacy at Risk?
Our friends at Children’s Technology Review shared with us these 5 top apps from their comprehensive monthly database of kid-tested reviews. The site covers everything from math and counting to reading and phonics.
Check back next week for more Top Kids Apps from Children’s Technology Review
Photo via Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
This story originally published on Mashable here.
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
A common issue often presents itself when Apple (AAPL) launches new products: it can’t build them fast enough. We’ve seen it time and time again, most recently when Apple launched the iPhone 5 and 150,000 dedicated factory workers still couldn’t keep up with demand. Now, a report has surfaced claiming that Apple’s manufacturing partners in the Far East can’t build units fast enough to keep pace with Apple’s iPad mini orders.
[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]
According to Digitimes’ supply chain sources, Apple’s parts suppliers have prepared enough components to build between 10 million and 12 million iPad mini tablets in the fourth quarter to accomodate heavy demand. Apple’s manufacturing partners are only expected to ship 8 million assembled units, however.
[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]
The report states that yield rates are improving though, and Apple is expected to ship 13 million iPad mini tablets in the first quarter of 2013.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
RIYADH (Reuters) – The editor of a Saudi Arabian website could be sentenced to death after a judge cited him for apostasy and moved his case to a higher court, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.
Raif Badawi, who started the Free Saudi Liberals website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in June, Human Rights Watch said.
Badawi had initially been charged with the less serious offence of insulting Islam through electronic channels, but at a December 17 hearing a judge referred him to a more senior court and recommended he be tried for apostasy, the monitoring group said.
Apostasy, the act of changing religious affiliation, carries an automatic death sentence in Saudi Arabia, along with crimes including blasphemy.
Badawi’s website included articles that were critical of senior religious figures, the monitoring group said.
A spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s Justice Ministry was not available to comment.
The world’s top oil exporter follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam and applies Islamic law, or sharia.
Judges base their decisions on their own interpretation of religious law rather than on a written legal code or on precedent.
King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s ruler, has pushed for reforms to the legal system, including improved training for judges and the introduction of precedent to standardize verdicts and make courts more transparent.
However, Saudi lawyers say that conservatives in the Justice Ministry and the judiciary have resisted implementing many of the changes that he announced in 2007. (Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
In theory, a driving game set in North Korea could be fun — it could revolve around delivering kidnapped movie stars from the airport to Dear Leader’s headquarters, for instance. In reality, though, it looks as though playing a driving game set in North Korea is about as much fun as actually living in North Korea. Business Insider’s Gus Lubin has posted his first impressions of “Welcome to Pyongyang,” an online game that’s “produced by Nosotek, a western IT company based in North Korea,” and he’s found that it’s pretty lame.
[More from BGR: Years after cashing out, MySpace cofounder mocks people who work for a living]
The goal of the game is to drive around the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and become familiar with all the great tourist attractions it has to offer. But unlike action-driving classics such as Crazy Taxi and the Grand Theft Auto series, Welcome to Pyongyang is annoyingly authoritarian and won’t put up with you crashing into cars or mowing down civilians. To make matters worse, the game doesn’t even give you the satisfaction dying at the hands of bloody-minded authorities if you break the rules too often — rather, it sends out a fascistic meter maid to simply tell you that you have been “stopped for bad driving.” We’re not sure what the actual penalty is for reckless is in North Korea, but we get the feeling it’s more severe than getting nitpicked by an annoying digital character.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Kantar Worldpanel’s report for November came out and much has been made of the iPhone market share surge in the United States. What I find interesting in the November numbers is just how ice cold the iPhone has gone in so many international markets, from Australia to Brazil to Southern Europe. The iOS market share showed hefty declines outside in many major markets: down 5.4 percentage points in Australia to 35.9% and down 1.6 points in Brazil to 1.6%. That’s right — the iPhone market share has halved in the most important South American market over the past year. And this happened while BlackBerry and Symbian market shares absolutely caved in. This should have been the period for Apple (AAPL) to pick up points while RIM (RIMM) and Nokia (NOK) floundered. Instead, the sky-high pricing of the iPhone models has effectively started reversing Apple’s market share gains across several major markets.
[More from BGR: Fan-made tweak gives Apple a blueprint for better multitasking in iOS 7 [video]]
In November, the burden of the stiff iPhone pricing was highlighted by how rapidly Windows has started closing the market share gap in Spain, Italy and France. Because Nokia has had trouble ramping up the production of the new Lumia 920 and 820 Windows models, it chose to crank out older Windows models like 800 and 610 for remarkably aggressive Christmas promotions. As European markets are now hitting 50% smartphone market penetration, consumer demand is shifting towards cheap models, and Apple cannot compete in the budget category. The new first-time smartphone buyers have a lot lower household income than the consumers who bought smartphones in 2010. In the recession-ravaged Europe, the upgrade cycle is lengthening and prepaid smartphones are a more important part of the overall product mix.
[More from BGR: RIM’s biggest problem: It’s still scrambling to catch yesterday’s hottest mobile app]
As a result, Windows market share in Italy hit a stunning 11.8% in November despite the razor thin availability of the Lumia 920. Windows has already erased most of the market share lead iPhone had in Italy. The iOS market share slipped to 20.6% during the last month. In Spain, Windows market share vaulted to 3% from 0.4% a year earlier while iOS share faded to 4.4%. As the affordable HTC (2498) 8S ramps up and the even cheaper Lumia 620 launches at the end of January, Windows may overtake iPhone in Spain already in February.
The strong performance Apple had in France and the United Kingdom kept its overall European market share climbing by 2.5 percentage points in November. But in Southern Europe, Latin America and parts of Asia, iPhone is slipping badly due to the lack of a low-end version. This is what is driving the Google (GOOG) Play revenue surge globally as Android apps now narrow the huge lead Apple built in the app market before the year 2012. Apple may well have to reconsider its iPhone pricing strategy in a fundamental way. Maintaining $ 620 ASP level globally could lead to a scenario where Android has 10-to-1 volume lead outside the United States and Northern Europe, and Windows actually has a shot at pulling well ahead of Apple in lower income countries from Spain to Brazil to South-East Asia.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
According to Japanese gaming bible Famitsu, Nintendo 3DS sold 333,000 units in the week ending December 16. Sony’s PS Vita limped along at 13’000 units. The new Wii U did an OK 130,000 units and PS3 managed 46,000 units. The utter hardware domination of the 3DS is reshaping the Japanese software market. Franchises that were thought to be fading have been revitalized in their portable versions. The 3DS version of the ancient “Animal Crossing” series, famed for being the game where nothing happens, hit a staggering 1.7 million units last week in Japan. “Inazuma Eleven” sold 170,000 units in its launch week, up from 140’000 units its DS version managed in 2011.
[More from BGR: RIM, HTC and Nokia could all be headed the way of Palm]
Nintendo’s portable console 3DS had a muted start in its home market in the spring of 2011. Many thought that Sony would have a fair shot at competing with Nintendo once Playstation Vita launched at the end of 2011. But once Nintendo executed an aggressive price cut for 3DS in the summer of 2011 and then launched a large-screen version of the console in mid-2012, the gadget has grown into a godzilla in Japan, demolishing both Sony Vita and aging tabletop console competition.
[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]
3DS is doing well also in America, where its lifetime sales are moving close to the 6 million unit mark this holiday season. According to NPD, the 3DS sales in the US market topped 500,000 units in November. That’s a decent number, though far from the torrid volume the portable is racking up in its home market. The US November video game software chart was dominated by massive home console juggernauts: new installments of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin’s Creed franchises shifted more than 13 million units in retail. At the same time, the Japanese software chart remains in a Nineties time warp, dominated by Nintendo’s musty masterpieces: Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc.
Japanese and American tastes have always been different. But what we are witnessing now is a particularly fascinating divergence. American consumers are spending more of their time and money on smartphone and tablet games, while console game spending is increasingly focusing on massive, graphically stunning blockbuster titles on Xbox360 and PS3. The casual gamers are shifting to mobile games, while hardcore gamers remain attracted to sprawling epics on home consoles. The overall video game spending in America keeps declining month after month, as casual titles and mid-list games slide. But the Triple A whales like Call of Duty series are doing better than ever.
In Japan, Nintendo has been able to battle back iPhone and Android game invasion with a nostalgic series of portable games that basically recycle the biggest hits of Eighties and early Nineties. Mario, Pokemons and other portable heroes are slowly losing their grip on US and European consumers. But in Japan, some form of national nostalgia is keeping Nintendo on track.
The problem here is that the Japanese success of the 3DS may now be convincing Nintendo that it does not have to rethink its business strategy. The smartphone and tablet game spending continues growing explosively across the world. Unlike console games, mobile game sales in China are legal. The global gaming spending is shifting towards new hardware platforms even as console mammoths like Halo still reign in America. At this critical juncture, Nintendo has managed to cocoon its home market in a web of nostalgia, turning the 3DS console and its Eighties left-over franchises into epic bestsellers yet again.
This means that there is no sense of urgency to push Nintendo into rethinking its long-term plans. The company may continue simply ignoring the smartphone and tablet challenge, designing new portable consoles and the 28th Mario game to support it. 20 years ago, Japan’s insularity doomed its chances to succeed in the mobile phone business. Ithe idiosyncratic nature of Japan may now be leading its biggest entertainment industry success astray.
This article was originally published by BGR
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is selling Motorola Mobility‘s TV set-top business for $ 2.35 billion, lightening the load that the Internet search leader took on earlier this year when it completed the biggest acquisition in its history.
The cash-and-stock deal announced late Wednesday will turn over Motorola‘s set-top division to Arris Group Inc., a relatively small provider of high-speed Internet equipment that is looking to become a bigger player in the delivery of video. Investors applauded the move, driving up Arris‘ stock by nearly 17 percent.
Google‘s decision to jettison the set-top boxes comes seven months after the Mountain View, Calif., company took control of Motorola Mobility Holdings in a $ 12.4 billion purchase.
The set-top boxes were never a big allure for Google, although the company is interested in finding ways to pipe its service on to TVs so it can sell more advertising.
Google prized Motorola for its portfolio of more than 17,000 mobile patents. Those form an arsenal that it can use in a fierce battle that has broken out over intellectual property as smartphones and tablet computers have emerged as hot commodities in recent years.
Motorola also makes smartphones and tablets, a manufacturing business that Google will retain, despite lingering concerns on Wall Street about the hardware shrinking Google‘s profit margins and possibly alienating other device makers that use the company’s Android software.
Besides not being a natural fit for Google, Motorola‘s set-top box also has become a potentially expensive liability. Digital video recorder pioneer TiVo Inc. is seeking billions of dollars in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Motorola‘s boxes infringed on its patents. Those claims are scheduled to go to trial next year in federal court in Texas.
Although they declined to provide specifics, Arris Group executives told analysts in a Wednesday conference call that Google still must cover most of the bill for any damages or settlement that TiVo might win.
TiVo already has negotiated about $ 1 billion in combined settlements in other patent-infringement cases it has brought against other companies, including Dish Network Corp., AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications.
The proposed sale of Motorola‘s set-top division calls for Google to receive $ 2.05 billion in cash and $ 300 million worth of Arris stock. If the deal wins regulatory approval, Arris Group expects to take over the division before the end of June.
Google will also pare its expenses, something likely to please investors concerned about Motorola being a drag on the company’s earnings. Arris said about 7,000 people work in Motorola‘s set-top division. Google ended September with about 53,500 employees, including 17,400 who worked on the Motorola side of its operations. More than 20,000 people worked at Motorola Mobility when Google became the owner in late May, but the payroll was slashed as part of an effort to pare the losses that have been piling up within Motorola as its once popular cellphones lost market share to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics.
But Motorola‘s set-top business had been making money, according to Google, though the company didn’t say how much.
In the past year ending in September, Motorola‘s set-top operations generated $ 3.4 billion in revenue. That makes it twice as big as Arris Group, whose revenue totaled $ 1.3 billion during the same period. Arris Group, which is based Suwanee, Ga., had earned $ 39 million through the nine months of last year after suffering a loss of nearly $ 13 million for all of 2011.
“This represents a great leap forward for Arris,” CEO Bob Stanzione said during Wednesday’s conference call.
Arris’ stock surged $ 2.46 to $ 17 in extended trading Wednesday while Google‘s stock dipped $ 2.61 to $ 717.50.
The other half of the old Motorola Inc., Motorola Solutions Inc., remains an independent company. Based in Schaumburg, Ill., it sells communications equipment to government and corporate customers.
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
When Tumblr went down Wednesday evening, users flocked to Mashable to express their rage and disbelief.
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[More from Mashable: Mysterious Package Addressed to Indiana Jones Arrives at UChicago]
Where were you the day that Tumblr went down? Whether you were at home, at work or on the move, it’s possible that you somehow ended up on Mashable. That was the case for thousands of Tumblr users, who, desperate for their GIF fix after a Tumblr outage on Wednesday, found themselves commenting on a Mashable story about the glitch.
Frustrated Tumblr frequenters left without a blogging platform transformed the comment thread on Mashable’s story into a makeshift Tumblr dashboard. Users gathered to commiserate, voice their anger and post GIFs to express their feelings. The micro-community that sprung up in the post made these the top comments on Mashable this week.
[More from Mashable: The Top Comments on Mashable This Week]
We recently renovated our commenting system to allow readers to embed video and images, a feature Wednesday’s commenters took full advantage of. By the time Tumblr was again functional, the story had accrued over 4,000 comments. Users traded domain names, discussed their blogs and, above all, bemoaned a lack of access to the site. YouTube user moviepimpdj posted a video of the rapidly moving comment thread.
This week we also saw major changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, with our readers feeling mixed emotions about the shift. The community mused on what 2013 might hold with respect to responsive design.
What were your favorite comments from the Mashable community this week? Get involved with the discussion by signing up for Mashable Follow. You could see your voice in our next weekly roundup!
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This story originally published on Mashable here.
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
It is not clear that Samsung (005930) even cares — but HTC (2498) continues outmaneuvering its far bigger rival when it comes to Windows Phones. The budget HTC Windows Phone 8S is no available from UK operator Three starting at the notably low £17 per month contract price. This is about half of what the monthly contract price of Samsung’s ATIV S Windows Phone model is expected to cost in the UK. Once it finally arrives. Possibly during the last week of the year. There is no firm word on when ATIV S might arrive on AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) at this point.
So not only did Samsung miss the U.S. and European Christmas sales seasons completely with its first Windows Phone 8 device, HTC actually managed to get both the high-end Windows Phone 8X and the budget 8S out before Christmas in some key markets. And Three now actually seems to be giving robust marketing support for HTC’s Windows Phone devices. They are featured prominently on the website and 8X buyers get a free Windows Pro upgrade for their PCs.
It is worth noting that the Windows Phone 8S looks very competitive in the UK prepaid market with a £180 price tag at Three. The Samsung Galaxy S Advance is £270 and Nokia’s (NOK) Lumia 710 is £200.
HTC recently started looking like Jessica Biel — too bland and too expensive — but with the 8S, it might be getting some of its European budget groove back. It is now starting to look like the November sales momentum HTC just showed will extend to December.
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Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Cloudera, a distributor of software that helps companies analyze big data, said it has raised $ 65 million in new funding.
The company is part of a growing group of businesses that help dig into the vast trove of data created by digital sources such as sensors, posts to the Internet, pictures and videos.
The field caught investor attention when Splunk, another data analytics firm, held an initial public offering earlier this year and doubled in price on its first trading day.
Cloudera’s business is based on Hadoop, open-source software that aggregates results from large sets of data. Cloudera provides services that allow companies to easily use Hadoop.
The funding round was led by Accel Partners, with participation from Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and Meritech Capital Partners. All Things D, which first reported the funding, said the company’s valuation was $ 700 million.
Cloudera, based in Palo Alto, California, last raised $ 40 million in November 2011.
(Reporting By Sarah McBride; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Guatemalan police arrested U.S. software guru John McAfee on Wednesday for illegally entering the country and said it would seek to expel him to neighboring Belize, which he fled after being sought for questioning over his neighbor’s murder.
McAfee, who had been in hiding for three weeks, crossed into Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend to evade authorities in Belize who wanted to quiz him as “a person of interest” about the killing of fellow American Gregory Faull.
“He entered the country illegally and we are going to seek his expulsion for this crime,” Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said. McAfee was detained by Guatemalan police and a member of Interpol at the upscale Intercontinental hotel in Guatemala City.
One of Silicon Valley’s first entrepreneurs to build an Internet fortune, the 67-year-old made millions of dollars through the antivirus software that now carries his name.
McAfee’s behavior has been increasingly erratic in recent years but there is no international arrest warrant for him. Police in Belize say he is not a prime suspect.
Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas said the entrepreneur would be expelled to Belize and he expected the process to be completed by early Thursday morning.
Fernando Lucero, spokesman for Guatemala’s immigration department, saidimmediate deportation had been ruled out. McAfee’s lawyer Telesforo Guerra was seeking an injunction to have him released and the American said on his blog www.whoismcafee.com that he would not now be returned to the Belize border until a higher judge reviewed the case.
McAfee was taken to a residence belonging to the immigration department guarded by a small group of police.
He had been seeking political asylum in Guatemala, which has been embroiled in a long-running territorial dispute with Belize. .
Residents and neighbors on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has lived in Belize for about four years, say he is eccentric, impulsive, volatile and at times unstable, citing his love of guns and young women.
McAfee has said he believes authorities in Belize will kill him if he turns himself in for questioning. Belize’s prime minister has denied this and called him paranoid and “bonkers.”
“It’s a wild, wild country,” McAfee told Reuters in an interview in his hotel room just hours before his detention.
“Everyone sees one part of Belize,” he said. “They think it’s a wonderful, peaceful, lovely place, blue waters, so McAfee has got to be crazy. Maybe I am crazy. If I were, I wouldn’t know.”
In Belize, he was often seen with armed bodyguards dressed in camouflage, pistols tucked into his belt. McAfee’s slain neighbor had complained about the loud barking of dogs that guarded his exclusive beachside compound.
His run-in with authorities in Belize is a world away from a successful life in the United States, where the former Lockheed systems consultant started McAfee Associates in the late 1980s. McAfee has no relationship now with the company, which was sold to Intel Corp.
NO REGRETS
There was already a case against McAfee in Belize for possession of illegal firearms, and police had previously raided his property on suspicion he was running a lab to make illegal synthetic narcotics.
He says he has not taken drugs since 1983.
“(Before then) I took drugs constantly, 24 hours of the day, I took them for years and years. I was the worst drug abuser on the planet,” McAfee said. “Then I finally went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was the end of it.”
But he has no regrets about the path his life has taken, or the loss of the lion’s share of his fortune over the years and says he is happier now that he cares less for material things.
“My life has not declined,” he said. “My life has been on the increase ever since I decided that stuff – houses, money – doesn’t mean much. I had more money than I could spend in million lifetimes. Why would I care?”
McAfee says he has been persecuted by Belize’s ruling party because he wouldn’t pay out some $ 2 million to it.
“The misunderstanding of the severity of their request for money was my big mistake,” McAfee said. “Had I known that, I would maybe have said $ 2 million is way too much. Let’s negotiate something, just don’t rape me for the next seven months. Writing a check would have been a lot easier.”
The party has denied soliciting money from him.
McAfee has been living in the tiny Central American nation for about four years, and wants to return to live there eventually. But he says he is being framed, and denies any involvement in his neighbor’s killing.
“We had one disagreement about a dog. I had disagreements with all my neighbors about my dogs. I had a disagreement with myself about my dogs. They were noisy,” he said.
“Why would I leave behind the body and all the evidence?” he asked. “I’m not stupid.”
(Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Philip Barbara, Lisa Shumaker and Patrick Graham)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Facebook (FB) announced on Tuesday that it will begin opening Facebook Messenger to consumers who do not have a Facebook account, starting in countries like India and South Africa, and later rolling out the service in the United States and Europe. This is a belated acknowledgement of a staggering strategic mistake Facebook made two years ago. That is when the messaging app competition was still wide open and giants like Facebook or Google (GOOG) could have entered the competition. WhatsApp, the leading messaging app firm, had just 1 million users as late as December 2009. By the end of 2010, that number had grown to 10 million. Right now, it likely tops 200 million, though there is no current official number on the matter.
SMS usage started peaking in countries like Netherlands in 2010. Companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google were being offered a giant new market on a silver platter with more than 3 billion consumers worldwide use texting on their phones and many of them started drifting away from basic SMS towards IP-based alternatives a few years ago. None of the behemoths saw or understood the opportunity.
They allowed the mobile messaging market to turn into a free-for-all between tiny start-ups like KakaoTalk, Kik, Viber, WhatsApp, etc. And with astonishing speed, the global market picked a winner and rallied around it. Back in early 2011, there was serious debate about the relative merits of different messaging apps and which one might ultimately edge ahead.
In December 2012, the competitive landscape is stark. Kik is not a Top 5 app in any country in the world. Viber is a Top 5 app in 21 countries, but they are countries like Barbados, Nepal and Tajikistan. WhatsApp is a Top 5 app in 141 countries, including the U.S,, U.K., Germany, Brazil and India. The only real weakness of WhatsApp lies in China, Japan and South Korea, where local champions still lead. But those local apps have zero chance of breaking out of their home markets.
The mobile messaging app competition is over. It turned into a red rout sometime during late 2011 and WhatsApp has emerged as the sole beneficiary of a textbook case of the network effect.
Facebook, Google and Twitter threw away their golden chance to create an SMS killer and grab hold of a billion users globally. It would have been so easy and cheap to develop a simple texting app in 2009, leverage the current user base of any of the IT giants and then watch the app soar to global prominence.
And it is so very, very hard to do now. Dislodging WhatsApp now would mean neutralizing a smartphone market penetration advantage that is hitting 80% in some markets. People often ask me why I’m so fixated on WhatsApp and the answer is simple: it’s the most popular and important mobile app in the world. And it beat Facebook, Twitter, Google and other major companies before they even realized there was an important war being waged.
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Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc opened the polls on Monday for its roughly 1 billion users to vote on a variety of changes to the social network‘s policies, including a proposal to scrap the user voting system that Facebook introduced in 2009.
Facebook also said it had “clarified” some of the proposed changes, specifying that a new policy allowing it to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram will be carried out in compliance with applicable laws and that Facebook will seek user consent when necessary.
The proposed changes, which Facebook announced on November 21, generated roughly 89,000 user comments as well as concerns from some privacy-advocacy groups and a request for more information from the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Facebook’s European business has its headquarters.
“Based on your feedback and after consultation with our regulators, including the Irish Data Protection Commissioner‘s Office, we’ve further clarified some of our proposals,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing in a post on Facebook’s company blog on Monday.
Facebook is proposing to eliminate the 4-year-old system that allows users to vote on changes to its governance policies. The company says the voting system hasn’t functioned as intended and is no longer suited to its current situation as a large publicly traded company subject to oversight by various regulatory agencies.
Facebook said on Monday that it would incorporate user suggestions for creating new tools to “enhance communication” on privacy and governance matters.
Another proposal would loosen the restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system. The company said it planned to replace the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.
Facebook’s potential information sharing with Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that it bought in October, flows from proposed changes that would allow the company to share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates it owns.
The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people’s personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc.
Facebook said on Monday that the proposed change was “standard in the industry” and “promotes the efficient and effective use of the services Facebook and its affiliates,” such as allowing users in the U.S. to interact with users in Europe.
“This provision covers Instagram and allows us to store Instagram’s server logs and administrative records in a way that is more efficient than maintaining totally separate storage systems,” the company wrote in a separate post on its website Monday titled “explanation of changes”.
“Where additional consent of our users is required, we will obtain it,” Facebook said.
Facebook users have until December 10 to vote on the policies using a special third-party application provided by Facebook and Facebook said the results will be certified by an independent auditor.
The vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.
(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Andrew Hay)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The U.S. presidential election became the most-searched item and Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person on Yahoo! in a year when online searches were dominated by big news stories and pop culture obsessions, the search engine company said on Monday.
The search term “election” topped the list of searches, led not only by extensive media coverage but also widening conversation on online social media platforms.
The term “political polls” was No. 8 of the top 10 Yahoo! searches of the year.
“The 2012 elections dominated the online searches, which is amazing because if something is in the news, it’s already accessible … people were really saturated by it, but even so, that was a key word that people typed throughout the year,” Vera Chan, Yahoo!’s web trend analyst, said in a conference call.
Chan said only two other news stories have topped the list in the past decade, those being the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 and the BP oil spill in 2010.
“iPhone 5″ came in at No. 2, which Chan said was interesting “in a post-Steve Jobs era” because while Apple Inc’s iPhone has featured regularly in the top searches since the first generation emerged in 2007, this was the first time a specific model had appeared high on the list.
Reality star Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person on the website, coming in at No. 3 and leading six famous women in the top 10.
Chan said Kardashian’s “notoriety has kept her at the top,” citing her ongoing divorce saga with ex-husband Kris Humphries, her high-profile relationship with rapper Kanye West and her E! channel reality shows.
Sports Illustrated cover model Kate Upton, British royal Kate Middleton, late singer Whitney Houston, troubled former child star Lindsay Lohan and pop star and former “American Idol” judge Jennifer Lopez all featured in the top 10 after being in the news prominently throughout the year.
Middleton, who was followed eagerly by fans and critics in her first year as a royal married to Britain’s Prince William and being a staple at the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, also garnered the most-searched scandal of the year when a French magazine published photos of her topless.
“olympics” came in at No. 7 on the list, as many turned to online media to watch and keep tabs on the global sporting event held in London during the summer.
On Yahoo!’s separate list of top-searched obsessions, pop culture dominated this year, with “The Hunger Games,” reality star Honey Boo Boo, erotic novel “Fifty Shades of Grey,” British boy band One Direction, Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit song “Call Me Maybe” and Korean rapper Psy’s “Gangnam Style” featuring in the top 10.
Yahoo! Inc compiles its annual search lists based on aggregated visitor activity on the network and billions of consumer searches.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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