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Update: BlackBerry Outage Day Three, RIM Still Investigating, U.S. Impact?

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 12:03:42 +0000

Beleaguered BlackBerry maker Research In Motion’s bad week is not getting much better.

As the company entered its third day of service outage in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, Stephen Bates, the head of the company’s UK operation, covering some seven million BlackBerry users, ducked out of a key RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) event in London while the company continues to try to get to the bottom of the problem that has left millions of users without messaging and internet browsing services. Now, users in the U.S. and Canada might find themselves impacted, too.

RIM’s most recent public statement on the outage, made last night, noted that “a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible.”

But in an interview this morning in London, Rory O’Neill, VP of software and services in EMEA, told paidContent that, in fact, the company is still trying to figure out what it is that has caused the fallover in its system.

Update: there are now reports emerging that the problems are now also affecting users in the U.S. and Canada. O’Neill would not explain how and if RIM’s services are running on the same infrastructure or whether it is regionally separated, but this latest development implies that the problem is affecting more of the company’s infrastructure that previously known or admitted.

O’Neill had to step in at the last minute at an annual company event, the BlackBerry Innovation Forum, to take over the keynote presentation in place of Bates, who is the MD of RIM in the UK. After making an apology to the audience, Bates left the event to fight fires elsewhere. “Stephen has gone back to talk to other channels, customers and partners to make sure they stay one hundred percent informed,” said. O’Neill.

O’Neill provided paidContent with a bit more detail on what is going wrong—or at least where RIM is standing at the moment.

He said that RIM’s software and engineering teams are working “24 by seven” right now still trying to figure out just what has gone wrong and get services restored. “The fundamental cause as far as we know is the issue with the core switch and a failing in the component architecture,” he said. “It has to do with how our networks speak to each other, and we are trying to fix that while preserving all messages.”

Overnight, he said, the system was actually performing “fairly well,” but then the components didn’t behave as expected.

It’s not clear if RIM itself shut down the system this time around to work on this issue, or if the system is simply not working any more. From O’Neill’s description, it sounded, in fact, like RIM could be forcing the shut down right now itself: “‘[Engineers] would be monitoring traffic loads and performance of the service. If they notice any component is failing, they will try to remedy or isolate it. When we see the service levels performing normally, we will put services back on as we see fit.”

He noted that currently, the problem is not a blanket one: in other words, some may still have email and/or BBM messaging functionality, while others might still be able to browse the Internet.

The way that the BlackBerry system works is that all data services except for text messaging are routed through RIM’s servers, regardless of whether they are enterprise-class customers or consumers. “I’ve had to relearn how to text,” he noted to me wryly.

Will enterprise users get compensated in any way for the service collapse? “It’s way too early to say whether there will be compensation,” he noted. But surely there will be something because of the SLAs that RIM will have in place particularly with corporate customers.

When the system is up and running, RIM moves about 20 petabytes of data per month worldwide, pushing millions of messages to BlackBerry customers in real-time, he noted.

The Morning Lowdown 10-12-11

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:41:15 +0000

Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:

?? RIM’s Service Outage Enters Day Three And Company Admits It’s In The Dark (paidContent)

?? How Gizmodo escaped indictment in iPhone prototype deal (Cnet)

?? Updated: WSJ Europe Chief Langhoff Resigns Over Ethical Concerns (paidContent)

?? @ CTIA: Wireless CEO Showdown Fizzles Amid Buzzword-Heavy Addresses (paidContent)

?? Gannett (NYSE: GCI) Shuttering MomsLikeMe Network, Deleting Everything (paidContent)

?? Google+ Traffic Falls 60% From Post-Launch Highs (Mashable)

?? TheDailyMeal Serves Up Ad Guarantee (Mediapost)

?? Planning a paywall? Maybe you should sell some e-books instead (GigaOM/Mathew Ingram)

?? What If We Had a Nutrition Label for the News? (Mediashift/Idea Lab)

?? Daily Deals Industry Moving Into Consolidation Mode (Street Fight)

?? eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) Set to Outline Its Future and It Looks Nothing Like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) (AllThingsD)

View post: The Morning Lowdown 10-12-11

NPD: Already, More Than One In Five Smartphones Sold Is 4G-Ready

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 11:14:33 +0000

Some interesting stats out today from the NPD Group underscore just how fast-moving the evolution is in devices today. Although fast mobile networks built on technologies like LTE are far from ubiquitous, 4G-capable smartphones accounted for more than one in every five smartphone purchases—22 percent—in the last quarter in the U.S. But with a substantial number of consumers still using lower-end devices, that could mean that we may be on the verge of a kind of mobile digital divide.

That 22 percent sales figure represents a significant rise on the year before, when only three percent of all smartphone sales to adult consumers in the U.S. were of 4G devices.

According to figures from comScore from the end of August, one-third of U.S. mobile consumers are now using smartphones.

The growth has partly been down to more devices hitting the market this year, but also the rise of more 4G services, of course, from operators including Sprint (NYSE: S), Verizon, T-Mobile and most recently AT&T (NYSE: T). Sprint’s WiMax network, the first 4G network to go live in the U.S., currently has the highest share of 4G smartphones on its network, and in fact is the only mobile operator whose 4G porfolio outsold that of other smartphones.

NPD, which charts sales as part of its “Mobile Phone Track” service, says that at the moment HTC is the 4G “superphone” leader, accounting for 62 percent of all of those sales and the top-three selling devices: EVO 4G (pictured), Inspire 4G, and Thunderbolt. Samsung is far behind that in second place with 22 percent of all sales. Third is Motorola (NYSE: MMI) with 11 percent and LG (SEO: 066570) is fourth at four percent.

That makes Android the undisputed leader in 4G for now. Apple’s newest iPhone, the 4S, will be able to support HSPA+ networks, which are also marketed as “4G” by some operators, and device makers are expected to release BlackBerry and Windows Phone-based 4G devices within the next year. NPD says it considers all devices that support HSPA+, WiMax and LTE networks, with speeds of 14 Mbps or higher, as part of this category.

Sony Hacked Again, But This Time, Comes Clean Quickly

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:49:27 +0000

Sony was lambasted last spring after it took seven days to disclose that an attack on its video game network had led to what some called the “largest identity theft in history.” Last night, the company disclosed that its customer data was hacked again.

In a message on its PlayStation blog, Sony’s chief security executive warned that hackers had broken into 93,000 customer accounts that contain information like names and credit-card information. Sony believes hackers did this by trying to log in to its network using information stolen from a third party:

We want to let you know that we have detected attempts … to test a massive set of sign-in IDs and passwords against our network database. These attempts appear to include a large amount of data obtained from one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources.

The post goes on to say that only 0.1% of customer accounts were compromised by the attack and that Sony was able to lock most of the hacked accounts in a short time. This is the second time in six months that hackers have broken into Sony’s PlayStation network, which consists of millions of video game enthusiasts who supply their credit-card information in order to participate in online game activities.

Sony’s quick warning differs from what took place after the April attack. On that occasion, which resulted in the large scale theft of customers’ email and credit-card information, Sony was blasted for taking up to seven days to disclose that an attack had even taken place and for failing to encrypt credit card data. It is facing a class action suit in the U.S. for failing to warn its customers and is in a fight with its insurer over who should pay for liabilities stemming from “the largest identity theft in history.”

This time, Sony’s clear and timely warning led customers to post dozens of grateful comments like “Thanks for the heads up Sony (NYSE: SNE). Well done. Bravo!” and “Awesome catch. I’m glad to see you guys really stepped up your response time and over all security.” Some of these comments may have been posted by Sony’s own employees, but overall the tone is markedly different than the universal criticism the company faced in April.

The response to Sony’s quick disclosure of the attack seems to vindicate the “come clean quick” approach to customer privacy issues. Of course, not everyone thinks transparency is enough. Other comments on Sony’s site include, “I feel like they are sugar coating and trying to make 93,000 accounts being compromised seem fine and acceptable” and “Come on guys, this is getting old.” A third group of commentators simply fretted that they would not be able to play video games while Sony fixed the problem.

Related

Continue reading here: Sony Hacked Again, But This Time, Comes Clean Quickly

The Amazon Publishing ‘Premium’: $100,000?

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:32:06 +0000

Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Publishing’s general trade imprint, headed by publishing industry vet Larry Kirshbaum, reportedly paid $850,000 for Laverne and Shirley star Penny Marshall’s memoir at auction—about $100,000 more than the next highest bid, according to Crain’s. Marshall’s agent, Dan Strone, CEO of Trident Media Group, called the $100,000 figure “absolutely false.”

Crain’s attributes Amazon’s willingness to pay such a high price to the fact that its imprint is still an untested entity and that some bookstores may refuse to carry Amazon Publishing titles. Strone said the idea that Amazon offered a lot more than other publishers is untrue: “Why would they pay $100,000 more? It was an auction and they won it,” he said to me. He told the Associated Press that Amazon offered a much higher e-book royalty rate than the traditional publishers’ standard 25 percent and said, “It was a decision whether to go with old school or new school.”

Amazon’s entry into trade book publishing, and its high profile hire of Kirshbaum, sent waves through the publishing industry this spring. So far, though, Amazon’s New York imprint (which still does not have a name) has not made any deals that have traditional publishers crying “OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY GOT [THAT PERSON].” There’s no Oprah memoir, for example. Amazon New York’s first acquisition was Timothy Ferriss’s 4-Hour Chef; in that instance, Ferriss approached Amazon directly and didn’t shop around a proposal. More recently, Amazon New York bought a memoir by exiled Chinese poet Liao Yiwu and a narrative nonfiction title about hacker-activists by Gregg Housh and Barrett Brown.

Now there is Penny Marshall, whose My Mother Was Nuts will be published in Fall 2012. Marshall may be a low-profile celebrity, but in a way, Amazon’s acquisition of her memoir makes a lot of sense: The people most likely to be familiar with Marshall (or to care about her) happen to be the people who are the most avid e-readers.? The middle-aged women who buy the most e-books and are most likely to own e-readers. Thirty percent of e-reader owners are over the age of 55. Penny Marshall is 70.

There were “lots of factors” for why Amazon bought the book, Strone said. “That’s certainly one of them, one of many.”

LocalResponse Raises $5 Million For ‘Check-In’ Ads

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:03:17 +0000

LocalResponse, the “check-in” ad network formerly known as Buzzd, has raised $5 million to build up its sales team as it tries to attract agencies and marketers to its offerings.

The New York-based company changed gears around April, when CEO Nihal Mehta sensed that Buzzd’s profile as an aggregator of Facebook, Foursquare, Gowalla check-ins as a city guide wasn’t going to cut it. By morphing into LocalResponse, Mehta felt he could take those same check-ins and instead of guiding consumers to restaurants or events, it could be used to help guide advertising.

LocalResponse collects “explicit check-ins” and creates what it calls “implicit check-ins” based on what users are saying about their activities and the geo-tags used in updates and photos on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. The idea is for marketers to respond to those “implied check-ins” with relevant ad or an offer. Secondly, LocalResponse also derives analytics based on users check-ins and that can also give marketers a clearer picture about the customers they want to reach.

Of course, this approach is not without challenges. While users certainly don’t mind relevant ads, individuals still have qualms about location-based ads or marketing that mines their social media conversations. For one thing, users who do check-in to restaurants or shops do appreciate deals and discounts, so that’s one way to warm them up. That’s essentially the message LocalResponse is bringing to the 40 marketers it has signed up so far.

“Tweet that you’re excited to watch X-Factor, and don’t be surprised to see an X-Factor ad on a digital billboard near you,” Mehta said in a statement. “Take a picture at a Yankees game and get an offer for a free beer from a nearby vendor. Check-in to a local retailer, and get an offer from them unlocking their latest promotion. It’s all on the table now.”

The company has previously raised $3.5 million, giving it $8.5 million in total funding to date. New investors Cava Capital, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Ventures, Advancit Capital, and Progress Ventures joined existing backers Metamorphic Ventures, Extreme Venture Partners, FF Ventures, Acadia Woods Partners and Jim Pallotta, among others, for the latest round.

Go here to read the rest: LocalResponse Raises $5 Million For ‘Check-In’ Ads

Why Children’s Books Could Take Off On The Kindle Fire

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:38:47 +0000

When the Hammock children, both now over two-decades old, were brand new, they were never more than a few inches away from an Eric Carle book. (The Very Hungry Caterpillar is likely the book I have read out-loud more times than any other book ever published, except, now that I think of it, Good Night Moon.)

So it caught my eye recently when reading about next month’s launch of the Kindle Fire that it is going to include a 1,000-title (at launch) collection of children’s books formatted especially for the Fire, including Carle’s classic (among Hammock children and millions more), Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?.

I’ve seen some punditry that suggests these “books” are likely to make it to other Kindle reading formats (which makes sense, as Amazon makes money from selling content, not hardware).?But those pundits aparently haven’t let it fully sink in that the Kindle Fire will not just be an e-book reader, ?it is an Android pad (tablet) device. It’s a computer with a touch screen.

So, despite having the word book in their names, this collection of Kindle Fire formatted children’s books are as much apps as they are books. If that assumption is correct, then the “appification” of ?1,000-books (or 1,000 apps) of children’s book/apps before the Kindle Fire launch next month appears to be heavily subsidized by Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN). Book publishers, especially the long-tail of small-house children’s book publishers, are already strapped keeping up with two formats (iOS and Kindle) to support yet another format, the Kindle Fire version of Android (which, like iOS apps, must be approved by Amazon before making it onto the Kindle Fire).

However, as always, some creative entrepreneurs started thinking about books as software long ago. The Kindle Fire could be their overnight success that took 10 years to happen. For example, the decade-old company zuuka publishes iStory Time apps for the iPad via iTunes and will have Fire formatted books on day one.

Perhaps because of those young Hammocks and my (even then) obsession with the whole paper-digital connection, about 15 years ago, an early Hammock project was a magazine advertorial that appeared in Family Fun magazine that was sponsored by several pioneer developers of what used to be called back then edutainment — think Madden NFL meets Richard Scarry’s Busytown. Long-gone (at least as independent entities) companies like ?Brøderbund sponsored it.

No doubt, had there been a Kindle Fire around in the early 1990s, the brand new Hammocks would have asked for Brown Bear, Brown Bear to be read over-and-over on that device, as well.

One thing any parent can tell you about children and their books: there is no such thing as a child getting tired of being read the same book over-and-over — nor, do I guess, being read (and playing with) the same book on too many apps in too many formats.

*All Amazon.com links go to my affiliate store. I think I’m up to $1.75 in commissions this year.

Rex Hammock is founder/ceo of Hammock Inc., the content marketing, strategy and media company founded in 1991 in Nashville, Tenn. He is also founder/helper-in-chief of the wiki, SmallBusiness.com. He started RexHammock.com in 2000, and you can follow him on Twitter @r.

Apple’s Newsstand Debuts, Grouping iOS Publications In One Folder

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:15:34 +0000

Conde Nast, Bonnier, Future, Nomad Editions and Associated Newspapers were amongst the publishers whose titles were on board when Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) launched its Newsstand feature ahead of iOS 5’s full launch on Wednesday.

The feature is a new application that merely contains latest issues of titles that iPad or iPhone users have subscribed to or downloaded in iTunes Store’s app store, a bit like a dedicated version of a regular folder.

Magazines and newspapers are still apps; no change there. The Newsstand folder contains a link out to titles’ apps on iTunes Store. Discovery is still done on iTunes Store. This is not a massive step change, this is not quite Apple “saving newspapers”.

But participating titles can invoke automatic edition updates, so the fatter apps can beam new editions to subscribers overnight.

Publisher participation in Newsstand means their app editions are now displayed only in the Newsstand folder and not on iOS home screens as the distinct apps they are. The Economist is not participating in Newsstand.

The Daily, Wired, Reader’s Digest and National Geographic were picked as featured U.S. publications inside Newsstand.
Conde Nast has placed titles including Wired and GQ in the system.
Associated Newspapers’ UK free commuter newspaper Metro on Wednesday replaced its digital replica PDF app with a proper iPad tablet app, built on Mobile IQ’s Press Run system, which plugs in to Metro’s production system. It will update automatically at 4am.
Nomad Editions, which is led by former Newsweek president Mark Edmiston and already had a single iOS app to aggregate its five HTML-based tablet-only magazines, is upgrading its app to be Newsstand-compliant.
Future Publishing (LSE: FUTR), which already had several unsuccessful Zinio digital replicas, has put much of its portfolio in to Newsstand in a similar way.

Simply Knitting will be available to buy to read on your iPhone/iPad via Apple Newsstand when it launches in a few hours.

SimplyKnitMag
Simply Knitting
about 6 hours ago

Read this article: Apple’s Newsstand Debuts, Grouping iOS Publications In One Folder

E-Book Checkouts From Libraries Up 200 Percent Over 2010

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:47:47 +0000

It’s no longer necessary to go to the library for a new book—you can just visit your local library’s website from home or from your mobile phone to check out an e-book. And that practice is taking off. OverDrive, the leading distributor of e-books and digital audiobooks to libraries, reports today that e-book checkouts nearly tripled through September 30, compared to all of 2010. E-books have been checked out 12 million times so far this year.

Contributors to that growth include Kindle and other e-readers adding support for library lending; expanded e-book offerings; and increasing library browsing via mobile phones and tablets.

Many more readers are now browsing library offerings from their smartphones and tablets, and mobile checkouts now make up 21 percent of overall checkouts, OverDrive says. (I’ve asked them to clarify whether that figure means overall e-book checkouts or overall print AND e-book checkouts combined, and will update the post when I hear back.) OverDrive has its own mobile app (which connects to users’ local libraries to let them check out offerings) and many OverDrive member libraries, like the New York Public Library, have released their own mobile apps as well.

Over 15,000 public and school libraries are now using OverDrive’s platform. A recent American Library Association study found that two-thirds of public libraries in the U.S. now offer e-book checkouts.

Sony (NYSE: SNE) included library lending with the launch of its new e-reader in August, and Kindle just gave users the ability to check out books from libraries. Both of these e-readers, as well as Barnes & Noble’s Nook, are OverDrive partners.

Zynga Aims For ‘Hypergrowth’ As IPO Nears

Editor — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:29:22 +0000

Pushing regulatory rules has become de rigeur when American internet firms prepare to go public. The infamous Playboy interview with Larry Page and Sergey Brin published during the “quiet period” before Google’s 2004 flotation, and more recently Groupon’s leaked memo spring to mind.It should be no surprise, then, that one of Silicon Valley’s hottest firms held its biggest ever press event during its enforced “quiet period”.

Zynga filed to go public four months ago, and co-founder Mark Pincus knows that a lot has happened since. Wall Street gyrations delayed some $9bn-worth of IPOs, not to mention Zynga’s 90% fall in second-quarter profits to $1.4m, reported just four weeks ago.

Frustratingly for the 150 journalists invited to Zynga’s new San Francisco HQ, questions involving numbers were almost always rebuffed. All others were referred to the company’s S-1 filing.

But, as is often the way, the internet darling came out top.

Zynga emerged as a company semi-autonomous from the internet giants – Facebook and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) – on which it has built its business. Zynga’s new frontiers, Project Z and HTML5, pitch the four-year-old startup as more than a opportunist trading on others’ platforms.

The challenge now is how it handles “hypergrowth”, as Marcus Segal, Zynga’s chief operating officer of game studio operations, called it.

Asked how Zynga avoids a situation where employees become affected by stock ownership and newfound riches, Segal downplayed the significance of its upcoming IPO.

“At Zynga, we’re totally focused on where we want to go. Zynga wants to become an internet darling. We want Zynga to equal play in peoples’ minds,

That’s what we’re really focused on,” he told the Guardian in an interview after the keynote.

“The IPO is a point in time, but it’s the beginning, it’s not the end and all of us know it. I feel like Zynga’s just scratching the surface and not anywhere near the end of the road.”

Zynga’s new headquarters, opened for the first time to journalists, symbolise a company on the up. The five-floor building houses more than 1,700 employees, and is peppered with classic 70s furniture.

Despite the eye-catching decor, most journalists’ thoughts were 40-odd miles down the highway, at One Infinite Loop, where fresh bouquets were being laid to mark a week since the death of Steve Jobs, the Valley’s greatest showstopper.