Web 2.0: RIM CEO Says Apps Unnecessary For Web - InformationWeek

Moments before Web 2.0 Summit co-chair John Battelle invited Research In Motion CEO Jim Balsillie on stage, he asked attendees how many had BlackBerry mobile phones and somewhere between 10% to 20% of the audience members raised a hand. Then he asked how many used to have BlackBerry mobile phones and noted that the number of hands was comparable.

The perception is that RIM's grasp on its market is slipping as adoption of Apple's iPhone and Android phones surges. That may not jibe with reality: Earlier on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker presented a slide showing that RIM's smartphone market share had grown from 7% in Q1, 2006, to 15% in Q3, 2010.

But RIM is at a transitional moment and concerns about the future health of its platform deserve some consideration.

Asked about his view of Apple, Balsillie did not mince words: "We think many customers are getting tired of being told what to think by Apple," he said.

"We believe you can bring mobile to the Web," he said. "You don't need to go through some control point SDK. You don't need an app for the Web."

Balsillie made it clear that he's all for native apps on mobile devices. But he stressed that proprietary tools are not necessary to make content mobile.

"It's really not about a set of proprietary tools," he said. "We completely disagree with that point of view."

He predicted that proprietary mobile computing would be a passing phase like the DRM era for music.

Balsillie talked up the performance of his company's forthcoming PlayBook, noting how well it performs in a video that has been posted to YouTube. "It's like three to four times faster than an iPad," he said. Yet asked whether he had one to show, he demurred.

Balsillie also balked when asked to comment on a competitor that isn't Apple. During a few minutes of audience questioning, David Levin, CEO of United Business Media, which owns TechWeb, asked whether it is over for Nokia (Levin was previously CEO of Symbian).

Balsillie initially declined to comment. Prodded by Battelle, he allowed that big shifts, like the shift from feature phones to smart phones, can be tough.

Asked to define RIM, Balsillie flashed his company's enterprise credentials. While recognizing that IT has been consumerized, he said you still can't dismiss enterprise requirements. "We sell performance," he said. "We sell Web fidelity and Web tools. We sell CIO, professional-grade requirements."

RIM, he said, is about "innovative performance and constructive alignment."

And someday soon, RIM will sell the PlayBook. Just not today.

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Beatles finally allowing digital downloads on Apple's iTunes - Washington Post

I'm sorry, were you expecting congratulations here?

This absurdly overdue development happened shortly before 10 a.m. - slightly in advance of the vague prediction posted on Apple's home page Monday.

Apple now offers all 13 remastered Beatles studio albums and the three major post-breakup compilations as multimedia-enhanced "iTunes LP" downloads, plus a $149 "box set" that includes all those releases and a video of the band's 1964 concert at the Washington Coliseum. (You can watch that last item for free in iTunes through the rest of the year.)

Individual songs cost $1.29 each, while single albums sell for $12.99 and double releases cost $19.99.

Apple's news release only cites that concert film as an exclusive. But the Fab Four's work doesn't show up on Amazon's MP3 store, Apple's main rival in the digital-download business. You can, however, continue to buy their CDs off the Seattle retailer's site - in some cases, for $3 to $5 less than what Apple charges.

That seems a fitting conclusion to this band's history of digital denial.

It's been almost seven years and seven months since the iTunes Store opened for business as the iTunes Music Store. The Beatles would have looked like visionaries to join Apple in this venture, and I'm sure Apple chief executive Steve Jobs would have given every black turtleneck he owns to have them. But they held back.

Three and a half years ago, Apple announced that it would stop requiring "digital rights management" restrictions on iTunes downloads - just a few months after Apple and the Beatles' Apple Corps record label had settled a long-running dispute over their similar names and logos.

The Beatles would have been hailed as pioneers for following up on that resolution by bringing their music to the Internet free of DRM shackles (even if that credit properly goes to the independent labels that never sought DRM in the first place). But they stayed aloof.

Just a year and a half ago, Apple banished DRM entirely from the iTunes Store's music inventory. But the Beatles picked that very day - as if they were flaunting their obstinance - to announce they'd be digitally remastering their catalogue for another re-release on CD.

Last September, the band licensed its music for inclusion in the Rock Band video game. But download sites continued to stock only the occasional cover version of their work.

Tuesday, the Beatles finally ran out of excuses for not letting downloaders give them their money. Alas, seven years is a long time to cede the market to file sharers and CD swappers who readily provided something that they would not. Is there anybody left online who doesn't already have all the Beatles MP3s they want?

This is a point that often gets overlooked in entertainment circles: The market continues to function even if the logical and rightful supplier of a product refuses to participate. The ease of duplicating and transmitting digital data ensures that somebody else will fill that vacancy.

You can mope about the massive copyright infringement that results from this dynamic, but the best way for artists to reverse it is to get into the market themselves.

Now that the Beatles have finally ended their tiresome, we're-too-good-for-the-Internet act, perhaps that change of heart (or the money they'll make off iTunes downloads) will lead to a similar rethinking among the lesser musicians who have also boycotted the download market.

That doesn't justify any media celebrations or heartfelt Baby Boomer ruminations over a band's decision to let its customers pay them. It certainly doesn't merit Apple's overclocked hype machinery, which had its home page promising visitors that Tuesday would be a day "that you'll never forget."

We probably will. And in the end, the Beatles will remain great artists. They have, however, proved themselves to be lousy capitalists.

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Murkowski Widens Lead in Alaska - Wall Street Journal

Sen. Lisa Murkowski appeared to hold enough of a lead over Joe Miller Tuesday evening to win the Alaska Senate race, with a 2,247-vote lead even without counting misspelled votes that could be challenged in court.

Getty Images Sen. Lisa Murkowski talks to reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday.

Ms. Murkowski launched a write-in campaign to keep her Senate seat after tea-party favorite Mr. Miller—endorsed by former Gov. Sarah Palin—beat her in the Republican primary.

With nearly all the names on write-in ballots tallied, officials had counted 100,868 votes in Ms. Murkowski's favor, compared with 90,468 votes for Mr. Miller from the Nov. 2 election, according to Alaska elections officials.

Of those 100,868 votes for Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Miller's camp has challenged 8,153 because of misspellings and other imperfections. Not counting the challenged votes, Ms. Murkowski would be left with 92,715 votes.

Mr. Miller has said in recent weeks he would move ahead with a federal lawsuit to throw out those contested ballots if doing so might give him a lead over Ms. Murkowski.

Even if a judge were to throw out the contested ballots— fewer than 1,000 ballots remain to be counted—Ms. Murkowski seems poised to win.

Election officials counted in Ms. Murkowski's favor most misspellings and other irregularities, as long as the voter's intentions seemed clear—a decision based on past Alaska elections in which voter intent was considered even if ballots were marked imperfectly.

Associated Press Observer Joe Geldhof, left, for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and observer Ivy Frye, for GOP nominee Joe Miller, closely watch the last of the write-in ballots during counting on Monday.

Mr. Miller has questioned the legality of that method, because state law says a write-in vote must include the candidate's name or last name as written on his or her paperwork, with "no exceptions." The candidate could also request a ballot recount at his own expense.

Mr. Miller's spokesman and his lawyer didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Throughout the past several days, Joe Miller has said that he will not continue to contest the election if the votes don't add up," said Ms. Murkowski's campaign manager, Kevin Sweeney, in a statement. "By the end of the day tomorrow after every Alaskan vote will have been counted, we expect Mr. Miller to keep his word."

Write to Vauhini Vara at vauhini.vara@wsj.com

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Uncovered: Images From Full-Body Scanners Hit the Web - Fox News

A new revelation could make the angry debate about the use of full-body scanners at airports even angrier: Some government agencies have improperly stored images from those scanners -- and those pictures have been made public. 

Gizmodo, notorious for leaking the first photos of the newest generation Apple iPhone, has revealed the images of 100 people taken from a U.S. Marshal in a Florida Federal courthouse who had stored more than 35,000 images from a full body scanner. 

The images don't come from the z-backscatter scanners in airports, which privacy advocates say take nearly naked photos of people. Rather, they come from a millimeter wave scanner, and the images are hardly high-resolution pictures of naked bodies. 

But they are images of public servants and private citizens that the Transportation Security Administration says are impossible to make public. 

"We understand that it will be controversial to release these photographs," Gizmodo wrote on its website. "But identifying features have been eliminated. And, fortunately for those who walked through the scanner in Florida last year, this mismanaged machine used the less embarrassing imaging technique."

The pictures come from a Brijot Imaging Systems machine and were obtained by a freedom of information request after it was recently revealed that U.S. Marshals operating the machine in an Orlando courthouse had improperly saved images of the scans of public servants and private citizens.

The leaked photos demonstrate the security limitations of not just this particular machine, but millimeter wave and X-ray backscatter body scanners operated by federal employees in our courthouses and by TSA officers in airports across the country. And they seem to run counter to the officially stated policy of the TSA.

The TSA's website states that "advanced imaging technology cannot store, print, transmit or save the image, and the image is automatically deleted from the system after it is cleared by the remotely located security officer." 

Whatever the stated policy, Gizmodo wrote, it's clear that it is trivial for operators to save images and remove them for distribution if they choose not to follow guidelines.

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Cholera outbreak likely to grip Haiti for months - USA Today

A cholera outbreak in earthquake-ravaged Haiti that has killed more than 900 people will continue for at least six months, possibly years, experts say.The outbreak has spread quickly, reaching at least six of Haiti's 10 provinces since it was confirmed Oct. 22, says Donna Eberwine-Villagrán of the Pan American Health Organization. So far, 16,800 people have been hospitalized, but she says the number affected is most likely higher because those who have not gone to a health facility have not been counted.

Her group estimates at least 200,000 people will become ill.

Now that the disease has a foothold, it will be nearly impossible to eradicate without permanent access to clean water, says Jeffrey Withey, a microbiologist with the Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

A massive earthquake in January left 1.3 million people homeless, many crowded in tent camps without plumbing.

"The outbreak will continue for the foreseeable future," Withey says.

A permanent solution in Haiti is far off, especially since government and relief agencies are overwhelmed trying to save people with the disease, says Sophie Delaunay, executive director of Doctors Without Borders USA.

The bacteria are spread through contaminated food or water. Relief agencies and the government have launched a campaign to teach people to drink only clean water, wash their hands with soap and clean water and dispose of feces properly. Cholera is lethal if untreated. It is relatively easy to treat with rehydration packs of salt or sugar water and antibiotics; even so, Delaunay says, relief agencies do not have enough supplies.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has started a $164 million fundraising effort that includes a proposed $90 million to build permanent distribution systems for clean water.

Complicating the response: riots in several cities Monday by protesters responding to rumors that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal were to blame for the outbreak. The riots left at least one protester dead and six peacekeepers wounded.

The U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti said the protests were linked to the Nov. 28 presidential election.

Robert Quick, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who is in Haiti, says it is likely that the cause of the outbreak will never be known. Global travel and trade make it easy for the bacteria to spread, he says.

The CDC concluded in March that cholera was unlikely to occur in Haiti because the country had not seen an outbreak in at least 50 years.

Afsar Ali, a University of Florida microbiologist who studies cholera in developing countries, was not surprised by the outbreak.

Ali says he went to Haiti in August and saw too many people in crowded, squalid conditions with no access to clean water. He says more surveillance of water sources, particularly in areas outside Port-au-Prince, could have alerted authorities to cholera in the water and an education campaign could have taught people how not to spread the bacteria.

Because the focus was on disaster relief after the quake, he says, "nobody paid attention. Everyone was busy doing other things."

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