Yahoo acquires image recognition startup LookFlow -- Flickr to benefit
One of Yahoo's most popular and successful products is Flickr. Adding to its list of acquisitions, the company is now taking LookFlow under its wing.
This California-based startup, which specializes in image recognition technology, is joining forces with Yahoo to "build a new deep learning group". It is likely that we'll see image based searching added to Flickr in the near future.
iPad mini pricing invalidates 'price umbrella' theory
Apple's long-awaited iPad refresh is finally a reality. Apple's new full-size iPad, rebranded as the "iPad Air", starts at the usual $499 price. Apple also unveiled an iPad mini with retina display, with a higher starting price of $399 and retained the original iPad mini at $299. Finally, the aging iPad 2 was also retained with the price unchanged at $399. This essentially proves my theory that Apple's pricing strategy has nothing to do with a "price umbrella" and everything to do with margins.
Apple's primary business model is selling high-margin hardware, so this should come as no surprise. While many like to draw comparisons to the iPod, the limited set of "jobs to be done" allowed Apple to aggressively slash BOM costs, thereby allowing lower prices at higher margins. This approach is no longer viable for the iPhone/iPad because of broader use cases and competition from modular vendors. Based on this, let's take a look at the iPad product portfolio and gauge its impact on Apple's holiday quarter.
Microsoft targets musicians with the innovative Surface Music Kit
Microsoft is hoping to appeal to serious musicians and remixers with a new add-on for its tablet range. The Surface Music Kit is a backlit cover (called a Blade) that plugs into the Surface keyboard port and replicates the sort of hardware buttons typically used by a music producer or performer.
When you connect the Music Cover, it will install the companion app automatically, providing you with access to all of the building blocks of a song -- templates, drums, bass, keyboard, vocals, and so on. You can use it to create new music but it’s particularly well suited to remixes and mashups.
Microsoft's Office oxygen supply problem
Google, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and my company Zoho have all offered free office suites for years, and on Tuesday, Apple announced that its productivity suite iWork will now also be available for free on all new Apple Macs and iPads.
Given that Microsoft Office has long been the de-facto monopoly, none of these rival companies have anything to lose in commoditizing the office suite market. That is the nice thing about facing a monopoly in an adjacent market -- every player other than the monopoly would win if they get a non-zero share of a massively shrunk market. If the $20 billion market shrinks to $2 billion, we at Zoho would celebrate it, as long as we can hope to get a share of that shrunken market. In fact, competitors would win even if they don't get any share of the shrunken market, because it denies the monopoly the ability to use its cash cow to dominate adjacent markets they do have an interest in.
Apple's mini tab weighs down iPad Air
New iPads reveal much about Apple's current and long-term device dilemmas. Full-size iPad cannibalizes Mac sales, while mini does the same to the larger tablet. Those are the clear takeaways from yesterday's product launches.
CEO Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, and perhaps that's a good thing. Where Jobs championed grammatically incorrect "think different" -- as a marketing and product development strategy -- Cook thinks differently, making fundamentally difficult branding and pricing decisions to preserve current and future Apple crops. There's great risk in the strategy and greater by doing nothing.
Pixelmator 3.0 FX adds layer styles and liquefy tools, OS X Mavericks support
Lithuanian developer The Pixelmator Team has released Pixelmator 3.0 FX, a major update to its popular Mac image-editing tool. Version 3.0 adds non-destructive Layer Styles, allowing users to apply multiple effects at once, as well as Liquefy Tools that allow users to shape images in multiple ways.
Version 3.0 also adds full support for OS X Mavericks, promising to tap into OS X 10.9’s new features like App Nap and Compressed Memory for faster, more efficient performance.
Mobile strategy becomes a priority for business
Mobile phones are almost as important as PCs for engaging with customers according to the results of a survey released by enterprise mobile specialist OpenMarket.
The study of 167 business leaders in the USA carried out by Forrester Consulting showed that 74 percent now think that mobiles are an important channel for customers, partners and employees, as against 79 percent for PCs.
The real cost of ransomware
Ransomware, software that locks you out of your PC and asks for a fee in order to release it, has been around for quite a while. The first examples date back to the late 1980s but in its most recent form it started to gain popularity with malware writers in 2006, starting in western Europe and rapidly spreading to the rest of the world.
Finnish security specialist F-Secure has been working with the police on a joint investigation and reckons that just one case could be responsible for up to $800 million of damage and losses.
Puran File Recovery is a very flexible undelete tool
If you’ve tried a few undelete tools then you’ll know most offer nothing more than the core basics: choose a drive, they’ll scan it, display any deleted files and you can select and recover them with a click. Nothing too inspiring, then, but still enough to be useful, most of the time.
The free (for personal use) Puran File Recovery follows the same core approach, but just takes it further, with more options, more flexibility, and probably more successful restorations than many of its competitors.
LG releases Fireweb, its first Firefox OS smartphone
Even though LG is the second-largest Android smartphone vendor and showing strong growth in the market, the South Korean manufacturer does not want to put all its eggs in one basket. The company is now also pursuing success with Firefox OS, with its new Fireweb smartphone.
The smartphone launches today in Brazil, alongside the Alcatel Onetouch Fire, at local mobile operator Telefonica Vivo. Like other Firefox OS devices, the Fireweb is aimed at the low-end smartphone market, featuring modest hardware by modern standards.
Apple inflicts major Surface damage on Microsoft -- probably doesn't even care
Yesterday was unquestionably the day of the tablet. Nokia unveiled the Lumia 2520, its first Windows RT 8.1 slate, Apple announced the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display, and Microsoft’s Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 went on sale.
It was unfortunate timing for Microsoft. On a day when Steve Ballmer and co. would have hoped people would be talking about Surface, they were salivating over Apple instead. The fruit logo company inflicted more damage on Microsoft than just drawing focus for a day however.
Nitro Pro 9 [Review]
It’s been a relatively quiet couple of years for Nitro Pro, the chief alternative to Adobe’s Acrobat PDF editing and conversion tool. Last year’s update was a minor one, opting to refine existing tools alongside offering a handful of new features. With the release of version 9, the question is, has Nitro continued to prefer evolution to revolution?
The answer is a qualified yes. It’s worth remembering just how good Nitro 7 was on its release, and version 8 built on that. Helped by a competitive upgrade price, it was a worthy upgrade. Like its immediate predecessor, Nitro Pro 9 doesn’t pull up any trees, but there are some nifty new features to add to an already impressive feature set.
BBM rakes in more than 10 million downloads during the first 24 hours
I will admit to being intrigued by BBM. I have never owned a BlackBerry smartphone (nor do I have plans to buy one) so I have never had the chance to find out what all the fuss is about. But, after the Canadian maker revealed that the service will also arrive on Android and iPhone, my interest piqued.
And I am definitely not the only one who is interested. Following the second release on rival platforms, in its first 24 hours on Apple App Store and Google Play BBM surpassed 10 million downloads, which is impressive for a service that only had 60 million users before the second half of the year.
I'm going all in, Microsoft-only for one week
When I got my first computer, a Packard Bell, it was running Windows 95. At the time, I was just happy that I could talk to girls on AOL. The political and religious nature of the operating system never entered my mind. This was because, at the time, Microsoft monopolized computing in America's households. Microsoft was computers to me and I was fine with that.
Fast forward to 2013 and we see a far different landscape in home computers. Heck, the idea of owning a desktop is foreign to many consumers as they instead opt for tablets. Shockingly, Microsoft is almost nowhere to be found in the tablet revolution. Yes, it was selling convertible, tablet-edition Windows devices years ago, but consumers weren't buying them. I should know, I sold them at the time -- well, didn't sell them, I should say.
Apple officially launches the cylindrical Mac Pro
Historically, the Mac Pro has been a beast of a machine -- a giant footprint on the desks of professionals. When it was originally released in 2006, it became an iconic fixture among artistic professionals. However, it was not just the outward appearance that was so pleasing to consumers, it was the inside too.
When the first generation was released, I was working at CompUSA. The store had an Apple section with a dedicated representative -- a precursor to the Apple store and its geniuses. We would often open up the machine to show off the internals because it was just that amazing. At the time, the inside of a typical Windows machine was just a mess of wires and poor design. The inside of the Mac Pro was organized and well thought out. Today, in continuing with this tradition, Apple officially launches the all-new Mac Pro. While things change, they also stay the same.
Most Commented Stories
BetaNews, your source for breaking tech news, reviews, and in-depth reporting since 1998.
Regional iGaming Content
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.