Apple addresses address-book furore
Apple appears to have acknowledged it needs to tighten up enforcement of its app guidelines following Path’s much-criticised uploading of users’ contacts to its servers without their knowledge.
“Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines,” an Apple spokesman told the FT.
Call of Duty takes big January hit
For anyone seeking holes in Activision’s seemingly bulletproof Call of Duty franchise, there was a chink in the armour exposed in NPD US January sales figures released late on Thursday.
Sales fell nearly 50 per cent year-on-year for the world’s best-selling video game in 2011 – that’s comparing the performance of the latest in the franchise – Modern Warfare 3 – with its predecessor, Black Ops.
Soraa declares a brighter LED 2.0
Cheaper, brighter, leaner are the qualities driving light-emitting diode advances and no less than three companies have announced breakthroughs on Tuesday that further advance LEDs as our bright, lighting future.
Soraa, a Silicon Valley start-up, has emerged from stealth mode with a halogen-replacement product (pictured), North Carolina-based Cree says its new product delivers twice the lumens per dollar of previous-generation LEDs, while Britain’s Plessey says it has a new process that cuts costs by 80 per cent.
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
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.
Facebook files – all you need to know
Facebook has finally filed to go public, with plans to raise at least $5bn. The 845m-strong social network’s S-1 registration statement appeared on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s website on Wednesday afternoon.
Some key facts from the IPO filing: founder Mark Zuckerberg has a 28.4 per cent stake worth $22.7bn, based on a $80bn valuation for the company. Facebook made $1bn on $3.7bn in revenues in 2011. It will trade under the symbol FB and Morgan Stanley is the lead broker.
After the jump, a breakdown of the contents of the 192-page filing and reaction from around the web as reported in our live blog.
New Apple store chief is Dixons CEO
Apple has finally named a successor to Ron Johnson as head of its retail store operation, choosing John Browett, chief executive of the British electronics retailer Dixons.
Mr Browett (pictured left) will join in April as senior vice president of Retail, reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Mr Johnson was named last June as the new chief executive of JC Penney, the US department store chain.
Dropcam HD adds extra sound and vision
Dropcam released a new version of its Wi-Fi security webcam at the Consumer Electronics Show this month and while it is due to go on sale on Tuesday, the company says it is currently sold out and orders placed will not ship till late March.
In which case, I am one of the lucky ones to try out a Dropcam HD, although, while it is a big improvement on its predecessor, I also had some reservations when testing it.
TelyHD, Biscotti bring TV calls for all
Talking to TVs was the talk of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this month, with voice and gestures being demonstrated as new ways of controlling internet-connected TVs that have become too smart in their interfaces and capabilities for regular remote controls.
But there are other uses for the cameras and microphones being introduced that can see and hear us. In this week’s Personal Technology column, I have been comparing the telyHD and Biscotti TV webcams that promise better living room communications over Skype and Google Talk. Longer reviews of both are after the jump.
Western Digital’s Eastern promise
The problems for the global PC supply chain caused by the flooding in Thailand are slowly receding, if not as fast as the floodwaters themselves.
Western Digital, the hard-disk drive maker hardest hit, said on Monday it was continuing to ramp HDD production and had resumed manufacturing on Sunday of sliders – a key component where the heads that read and write to a disk are mounted. Slider operations had been suspended since October 10.
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