Daily Archives: February 2, 2012

From Personal Tech column February 2, 2012

Macworld thriving without Apple

Macworld has lost much of its allure since Apple announced it was pulling out in 2008 and it no longer upstages the annual Consumer Electronics Show, as it did in 2007, when Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone there. But the show continues to demonstrate that innovation abounds in the Apple ecosystem.

There’s an app[lication] for that,” as Apple says, for anything you care to do on its devices and Macworld tends to prove there is an acc[essory] for that as well, when it comes to boosting the features of an iPhone or iPad.

The force is with digital, mobile games

February 2, 2012 10:28 pm by Chris Nuttall

Two trends clear in Facebook’s IPO filing on Wednesday were the inexorable rise in importance of digital-based gaming revenues and the growth in mobile – we learned Zynga was a key revenue-generator for Facebook and half of Facebook’s members were now users of its mobile products .

Earnings and data from Electronic Arts, THQ and Japan’s Gree over the past 24 hours further emphasise that the old order of disc-based console gaming will have a declining share of consumers’ attention, as consoles become more general entertainment boxes and smartphones and tablets proliferate. Read more

Tags: EA, Facebook, Gree, THQ, Zynga
Posted in Games | Permalink

If you app it, they will come

February 2, 2012 10:06 pm by FT

BNP Paribas has launched an iPad app in the hope that hedge fund managers will want to check out their stock holdings on the move, writes Dan McCrum.

“You can get off an airplane and in one minute see everything that’s happening in your portfolio,” says Sam Hocking, head of prime brokerage sales for the French Bank. Read more

Posted in Commerce, Mobile, Software | Permalink

Facebook filing flags privacy risks

February 2, 2012 12:49 pm by Maija Palmer

Getty Images

One thing Facebook’s IPO filing documents make clear is that the company is taking privacy risks seriously. Privacy is mentioned 35 times, mainly as a risk factor.

The company acknowledges that media coverage of privacy lapses, for example, could affect profits. Read more

Tags: EU, Facebook, Federal Trade Commission, Hamburg Data Protection Authority, IPO filing, privacy
Posted in Europe, Internet, Tech | Permalink

From FT.com February 1, 2012

Tech companies double central London office space

Technology companies are fast taking up some of the slack in the London property market created by the downsizing of the financial services sector.

IT, telecoms and internet start-up companies doubled their uptake of office space in central London during 2011. In total, the industry took up 1.3m square feet of office space in 2011, compared with 640,000 square feet in 2010, according to data from Knight Frank.