Samsung Challenges Apple's Cool

This is something I've been thinking about more often since getting an iPhone. It's an amazing piece of technology, but what's the competition? Who makes a better device? Remember, I mentioned the iPad had a huge glitch with the browser crashing, so that experience really tarnished the user vibe for Apple products. Their stuff is still the most invulnerable from malware --- or, that's what they say. But criminal programmers will get to them sooner or later.

In any case, at the New York Times, "Samsung Emerges as a Potent Rival to Apple’s Cool":

Apple, for the first time in years, is hearing footsteps.

The maker of iPhones, iPads and iPods has never faced a challenger able to make a truly popular and profitable smartphone or tablet — not Dell, not Hewlett-Packard, not Nokia, not BlackBerry — until Samsung Electronics.

The South Korean manufacturer’s Galaxy S III smartphone is the first device to run neck and neck with Apple’s iPhone in sales. Armed with other Galaxy phones and tablets, Samsung has emerged as a potent challenger to Apple, the top consumer electronics maker. The two companies are the only ones turning profits in the highly competitive mobile phone industry, with Apple taking 72 percent of the earnings and Samsung the rest.

Yet these two rivals, who have battled in the marketplace and in the courts worldwide, could not be more different. Samsung Electronics, a major part of South Korea’s expansive Samsung Group, makes computer chips and flat-panel displays as well as a wide range of consumer products including refrigerators, washers and dryers, cameras, vacuum cleaners, PCs, printers and TVs.

Where Apple stakes its success on creating new markets and dominating them, as it did with the iPhone and iPad, Samsung invests heavily in studying existing markets and innovating inside them.

“We get most of our ideas from the market,” said Kim Hyun-suk, an executive vice president at Samsung, in a conversation about the future of mobile devices and television. “The market is a driver, so we don’t intend to drive the market in a certain direction,” he said.

That’s in stark contrast to the philosophy of Apple’s founder Steven P. Jobs, who rejected the notion of relying on market research. He memorably said that consumers don’t know what they want.

Nearly everything at Samsung, from the way it does research to its manufacturing, is unlike Apple. It taunts Apple in its cheeky advertisements while Apple stays above the fray.

And the Korean manufacturer may even be putting some pressure on Apple’s world-class designers. Before Apple released the iPhone 5, which had a larger screen than earlier models, Samsung had already been selling phones with even bigger displays, like the 5.3-inch screen Galaxy Note, a smartphone so wide that gadget blogs call it a phablet.

Samsung outspends Apple on research and development: $10.5 billion, or 5.7 percent of revenue, compared with $3.4 billion, or 2.2 percent. (Samsung Electronics is slightly bigger than Apple in terms of revenue — $183.5 billion compared with $156.5 billion — but Apple is larger in terms of stock market value.)

Samsung has 60,000 staff members working in 34 research centers across the globe, including, Russia, Britain, India, Japan, Israel, China and Silicon Valley. It polls consumers and buys third-party research reports, but it also embeds employees in countries to study trends or merely to find inspiration for ideas.

Designers of the Galaxy S III say they drew inspiration from trips to Cambodia and Helsinki, a Salvador Dalí art exhibit and even a balloon ride in an African forest. (It employs 1,000 designers with different backgrounds like psychology, sociology, economy management and engineering.)

“The research process is unimaginable,” said Donghoon Chang, an executive vice president of Samsung who leads the company’s design efforts. “We go through all avenues to make sure we read the trends correctly.” He says that when the company researches markets for any particular product, it is also looking at trends in fashion, automobiles and interior design.

Continue reading.

And see Steve Kovach, at CNN, "How Samsung Is Out-Innovating Apple."

Burger King Twitter Account Hacked

Whoa, this is nasty.

At Twitchy, "Oh dear: Burger King’s Twitter account hacked; Updated."

And Sarah Rumpf comments:

I'm honestly surprised it has lasted this long this morning (over an hour so far). But hey, if companies and politicians want to keep delegating social media to 17 year old interns, then the rest of us will continue to be entertained by stories like this.

No doubt. Also at the Los Angeles Times, "Burger King's Twitter account hacked, made to look like McDonald's."

Apple's Falling Stock Causing Headaches for Investors

I haven't paid attention to Apple's share price, but apparently if you're an investor, it's not the best of times.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Coping With the Pain of Souring Apple Shares: Some Investors See a Cheap Stock, but Others Have Sold Everything; 'Headache, Not a Cancer'":

As the U.S. stock market flirts with record highs, investors who hold big stakes in Apple Inc. AAPL -0.41% are taking a beating.

Since peaking at $705.07 during the day on Sept. 21, Apple shares have fallen 36% to close at $453.62, erasing more than $236 billion in market value—a figure equal to about 35 times the current value of BlackBerry RIM.T +0.70% maker Research In Motion Ltd.

The pain has been widespread. About 60% of actively managed U.S. stock mutual funds that invest in big companies owned at least some Apple shares at the end of the year, according to investment-research firm Morningstar Inc. MORN +0.53% Ninety funds had 10% or more of their portfolios in the stock.

But Apple's plunge is affecting investors in different ways. While some are getting out for good, others are staying put or even buying more. And some are glad they avoided the stock altogether.

Most mutual funds disclose their holdings quarterly, but the 145 actively managed U.S. stock funds that hold Apple and reported monthly results sold a net 223,402 shares, or 3% of their Apple holdings, in December, according to Morningstar, a time when the stock was between 16% and 28% off its peak. Sixty-one funds sold shares, while 45 funds bought.

That doesn't mean all of them took losses. Even with the setback, Apple has generated a total return, including dividends, of about 28% annually over the past five years, versus 4% for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. In four of the past 10 years, Apple's stock price has more than doubled, and its only full-year loss over the past decade occurred in 2008.

Here are some examples of how professional money managers and small investors have reacted...

Continue reading.

Now, in related news, it turns out that my wife's iPad has a pretty serious browser glitch. It crashes a lot when I'm going heavy on the YouTube blogging. I love videos. And I thought Apple was going to be an improvement over the others, like Chrome. And it seemed like it for awhile, although it's been crashing pretty regularly, and not just this last few days. I found an article on this, at OS X Daily, "Fix Safari Crashing on iPad and iOS 5." I'm not going to worry about the fix, since it's not my device and my wife hasn't complained. We bought the extended warranty, in any case, so I'll bring it up with the Apple folks next time we're down at the Irvine Spectrum retail store. Still, folks should read this comment at the OS X Daily piece, from Martin Bloom":

In early Janurary I went onto the Apple Community discussion board because of my iPad 1 continually crashing after updating to IOS 5.  Specifically Safari would crash on sites rich with images and/or imbedded videos (techcrunch, techradar, etc).  Also iTunes wouldn’t stay open. And using the back arrow on sites like CNN and other news sites would bring up an old front page rather than the newer page.

At first I was just a viewer until some people, who were rudely dismissive of people’s crash problems, said that only signed in complaints were indicators of the breadth of the problem and the number of  ”views” didn’t count. So i signed in to: Re Safari crashes on iPad after ios 5 update.

I related that I had the same problems since ios 5, that I tried every fix written about to no lasting improvement, and that I sent a letter with a printout from the discussion thread to Tim Cook.  Next day I recieved a phone call and email from Apple’s Corporate Executive Relations Office. They were very empathetic and committed to work with me.  They listened to my background in the industry and my list of issues that were also expressed by others on the Apple Community under several separate discussion threads. The main issue being that Apple, apparently didn’t read the threads or was ignoring them.  I expressed that the single most helpful thing they could do would be some type of communication to the groups that they understand, they cared, and are doing everything to find a set of solutions.

They (Corp Exec Relations) assured me that they do look at the discussions, have replicated the problems in tech support and engineering. They also acknowledged a culture of keeping all work close to the vest and this could be hurting them by creating a perception of not caring about the user experience in a “post Jobs era”. They hooked me up with high level tech support and offered to work with me step by step to a resolution.  I said that working with me as an “one off” would deflect resources from solving the overall problems, since they have been documented and replicated.  I told them I would relate this conference with Apple to the discussion threads. These talks and emails with the Corp Office was over several days with much discussion about the impacts of the problems. This included losing the confidence in the reliability of Apple products since many of the iPad purchases and complaints were from PC platform crossovers who moved to Apple’s “because it just worked”. These new users, including corporations who bought hundreds for employees who were saying “never again”.

I then posted my discussions with Apple on the Community thread and was accused by a long time member of my post being a false, and self serving rant. He said he and other long timers took pride in reporting my abuse of the Community rules and had my post removed and my account banned.  I wrote back to the Corp Exec Relations office on the “irony of it all” since this had been a “keep the hope…..they do care” post. The Corp Office got me back on, removing the ban.  But now, no matter what I write, the discussion thread’s monitor removes it saying it is “off topic”.

I have not gotten back to Apple’s Corp Exec Relations regarding my posts being removed and am just waiting for the yet to come, update release with prayers of a fix for all affected users, and for Apple.  Yes, I am still a first in line fanboy.

Marty Bloom, Walnut Creek CA

Sent from my iPad

EXTRA: Here's more tech fun for you, from Twitter, "Keeping our users secure" (at Memeorandum). Twitter was hacked and 250,000 users had their data compromised. It's hard out there for a tweep!

Michael Kinsley's Hate Mail

This is really a story of Michael Kinsley slinking back to The New Republic for the umpteenth time. He first wrote at (for) the magazine 36 years ago. He's been just about everywhere else since, including an extremely undistinguished stint as the editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times about a decade ago. In any case, here's his piece, at the completely made-over TNR, "Sixth Time's the Charm: My Journalistic Life in (Nasty) Letters":

In 1979, I received a letter that I can still recite by heart, because it was very short, and it was taped on the wall next to my desk for many years, reminding me of the first time I came back to The New Republic. I had quit as editor in an ethical dispute with the editor-in-chief.

Ted Kennedy was challenging President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. At this point, before he remarried, Kennedy's dual reputation for girth and senatorial statesmanship had not yet overcome his reputation as a party boy. My position was that Kennedy's attitude toward women was a legitimate issue; the editor-in-chief's position was that even Ted Kennedy had a right to privacy. I sulked for a couple of weeks, reflected on the nature of capitalism, and slunk back to work.

The letter arrived a few days later. I don't remember who from. It made up in pith what it lacked in colorful details. It read:

Dear Mr. Kinsley:
I didn't know that you had gone, but I'm sorry to see that you're back.

That reader has suffered a lifetime of disappointment, because this week marks—depending on how you count—the fifth or sixth time I have knocked on The New Republic's door. And each time, they have let me back in. My reasons for leaving have varied: greater glory (or so I thought), bigger audience, more money, disputes with the management, an opportunity (one of two that, according to Gore Vidal, you should never turn down) to appear regularly on television. But I always came back eventually.

It's 36 years since I first worked for The New Republic, 23 years since the last time I wielded the editor's scythe, and 17 years since I have written for the magazine regularly. The last time I resigned as editor, the current editor-in-chief and owner was five years old. Needless to say, he is wise beyond his years.

This time, I return not as the editor (please direct your complaints and article submissions elsewhere) but as "editor-at-large." I see this as a sort of avuncular role, in which my primary duty will be cornering the young people in the office and forcing them to listen to tedious anecdotes about the old days. I also plan to write self-indulgent, lachrymose memoirs of journalistic colleagues and friends as they, one by one, drop off their perches.

Project Bore the Interns will be immeasurably aided by my recent discovery of several boxes of letters hidden in a corner of my garage.

Continue reading.

It's actually an interesting piece. And I used to think Kinsley was interesting back in the old "Crossfire" days. But by this stage in the game I've read too many of his very left-wing op-eds to be that excited. Although TNR's publishing makeover looks pretty snazzy. More on that at the New York Times, "The New Republic Reimagines Its Future" (along with the additional commentary at Mediagazer and Memeorandum).

Facebook Envy

At the Chicago Tribune, "Study finds rampant envy on Facebook":

Witnessing friends' vacations, love lives and work successes on Facebook can cause envy and trigger feelings of misery and loneliness, according to German researchers.

A study conducted by two German universities found rampant envy on Facebook, the world's largest social network, which has more than 1 billion users.

The researchers found that 1 in 3 people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives, while people who browsed without contributing were affected the most.

"We were surprised by how many people have a negative experience from Facebook, with envy leaving them feeling lonely, frustrated or angry," researcher Hanna Krasnova from the Institute of Information Systems at Humboldt University in Berlin told Reuters.

"From our observations, some of these people will then leave Facebook or at least reduce their use of the site," Krasnova said, adding to speculation that Facebook could be reaching a saturation point in some markets.

I just don't care for it that much. Twitter's way more fun.

Personal Computers On the Way Out

If the PC isn't on the way out economy-wide, it's certainly on the way out in my household. Not only have we not had a PC for a few years, we're now almost all on Apple mobile devices. I bought my wife an iPad for Christmas. Both my sons are fully on Apple. I got an iPhone 5 a couple months back and I'll be purchasing an Apple laptop sometime early next year. The part, at the clip, about taking your computing devices with you really says it all. I need a laptop to blog, but other than that I can do just whatever I want on handheld devices. The changes in technology are endlessly fascinating. I'm just wondering when we'll get some real robust economic growth amid all the innovation, like we had during the 1990s' Internet boom.

Instagram Disables Twitter Card Integration

I noticed this the other day while embedding a tweet, from Nick Bilton at NYT Bits "Twitter Loses Ability to Properly Display Instagram Photos":

Welcome to the Photo Wars.

Instagram on Wednesday disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display Instagram photos on its Web site and in its applications. The move escalates tensions between the two companies, which were once friends in the battle against Facebook but have now become direct competitors.

In a status update on Twitter’s Web site, the company said Instagram had disabled its integration with Twitter cards, which are used to display images and content within Twitter messages.

“Users are experiencing issues with viewing Instagram photos on Twitter,” the post said. “This is due to Instagram disabling its Twitter cards integration, and as a result, photos are being displayed using a pre-cards experience.”

Speaking at the LeWeb technology conference, Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s chief executive, confirmed that the company has removed the ability to send pictures to Twitter, and plans to completely cut off embedding pictures on the Twitter Web site.

“We’ve decided that right now, what makes sense, is to direct our users to the Instagram Web site,” Mr. Systrom said, noting that Instagram images will soon no longer be visible on Twitter. “Obviously things change as a company evolves.”

Mr. Systrom did not say when images will cesase to show up on the site.

'There is much to life beyond politics...'

Ann Althouse offers some consolation, at Instapundit, "THANKS TO GLENN..."

And from Ann's blog, "'Listen, I like stopping by Althouse, but let's get real. Althouse and Meade are living a high-income, privileged life that many of us can only dream about'."

Andrew Malcolm Dissects New Media and the Future of Journalism

A great clip.

Nick Gillespie talks to Andrew Malcolm:

Why Are We So Nasty to Each Other Online?

This is interesting, at the Wall Street Journal, "Why We Are So Rude Online: Online Browsing Lowers Self-Control and Is Linked to Higher Debt, Weight":

Jennifer Bristol recently lost one of her oldest friends—thanks to a Facebook fight about pit bulls.

The trouble started when she posted a newspaper article asserting that pit bulls were the most dangerous type of dog in New York City last year. "Please share thoughts… 833 incidents with pitties," wrote Ms. Bristol, a 40-year-old publicist and animal-welfare advocate in Manhattan.

Her friends, many of whom also work in the animal-welfare world, quickly weighed in. One noted that "pit bull" isn't a single official breed; another said "irresponsible ownership" is often involved when dogs turn violent. Black Labs may actually bite more, someone else offered.

Then a childhood pal of Ms. Bristol piped up with this: "Take it from an ER doctor… In 15 years of doing this I have yet to see a golden retriever bite that had to go to the operating room or killed its target."

That unleashed a torrent. One person demanded to see the doctor's "scientific research." Another accused him of not bothering to confirm whether his patients were actually bitten by pit bulls. Someone else suggested he should "venture out of the ER" to see what was really going on.

"It was ridiculous," says Ms. Bristol, who stayed out of the fight. Her old buddy, the ER doctor, unfriended her the next morning. That was eight months ago. She hasn't heard from him since.

Continue reading.

My theory is that online you're always right. People don't care about others' opinions. They seek out people who agree with them. So even if you're a friend in the "real world," online you become an enemy if you're on the wrong side of an issue.

Jay Whiston, British 17-Year-Old, Killed After House Party Crashed by Facebook 'Friends'

Another one of those incredible teen tragedies you couldn't imagine happening when you were a kid.

At Telegraph UK, "Teenager stabbed to death after Facebook party is gatecrashed":

A promising A-level student was stabbed to death after a quiet house party spiralled out of control when gatecrashers spotted an invite on Facebook.

Jay Whiston, 17, collapsed after being stabbed in the stomach during an altercation over a mobile phone at the party in a quiet suburb of Colchester, Essex.

Partygoers described how the well-behaved teenage gathering, at which the host’s parents were present, descended into chaos as a large number of uninvited guests turned up and began to cause trouble.

According to witnesses, Mr Whiston, who lived with his family in Clacton, was stabbed when he attempted to intervene in a row over a mobile phone.

Paramedics, who were called to Marlowe Way in Colchester shortly after 10pm on Saturday evening, rushed Mr Whiston to Colchester General Hospital but he was pronounced a short time later.

Last night his grieving mother Caroline Shearer, 47, warned parents everywhere of the devastating impact of knife crime.

See also London's Daily Mail, "Boy, 17, stabbed to death as Facebook gatecrashers storm suburban house party supervised by parents of teenage girl."

Apple Wins $1 Billion in Samsung Patent Trial

A billion dollars ain't no chump change either.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Apple Wins Big in Patent Case: Jury Finds Samsung Mobile Devices Infringed Six Apple Patents, Awards $1.05 Billion in Damages":

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Nine jurors delivered a sweeping victory to Apple Inc. in a high-stakes court battle against Samsung Electronics Co., awarding the Silicon Valley company $1.05 billion in damages and providing ammunition for more legal attacks on its mobile-device rivals.

Jurors Friday found that Samsung infringed all but one of the seven patents at issue in the case—a patent covering the physical design of the iPad. They found all seven of Apple's patents valid—despite Samsung's attempts to have them thrown out. They also decided Apple didn't violate any of the five patents Samsung asserted in the case.

The damage award is shy of Apple's request for more than $2.5 billion, but much larger than Samsung's estimates and still ranking among the largest intellectual-property awards on record.

"Today's verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer," Samsung said. "It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices."

An Apple spokeswoman said, "The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew."

More at that top link.

And a bunch of commentary at Techmeme.

Doubts Grow Over Mark Zuckerberg's Role as Facebook CEO

And I'm sure the doubts will continue growing even if he's replaced. Frankly, I don't see how Facebook's going to perform for its investors. It's basically a fad. (And anecdotally, I never click their ads --- and that's if I even log on, which is hardly ever.)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Is Mark Zuckerberg in over his hoodie as Facebook CEO?":

The deepening slide in  Facebook Inc.'s stock is fueling talk once considered implausible on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.

Should Mark Zuckerberg, the social media visionary but neophyte corporate manager, step aside as CEO to let a more seasoned executive run the multibillion-dollar company?

In that scenario, Zuckerberg would remain as the creative force propelling Facebook's technological innovation. But the 28-year-old would cede the CEO title to someone better suited to overseeing operations and building rapport with finicky investors — mundane but essential duties for which Zuckerberg has shown little appetite or aptitude.

"There is a growing sense that Mark Zuckerberg, talented though he may be, is in over his hoodie as CEO of a multibillion-dollar public company," said Sam Hamadeh, head of research firm PrivCo. "While in many cases a company founder can, and does, grow into the job, things are happening so quickly that there is precious little time here for Zuckerberg to do that."

Doubts about the Facebook founder intensified Thursday as the stock closed below $20 for the first time. The shares, which slipped to $19.87, have shed nearly half their value since Facebook's disastrous initial public offering three months ago....

*****

Zuckerberg's indifference to traditional corporate etiquette — he wore sneakers and his trademark hoodie for Facebook's first big investor meeting — is viewed as disrespectful of the corporate world he needs to win over.

"His behavior is what I would expect of someone his age — the hoodies and everything else," said Chris Whalen, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners in New York. "He's trying to appeal to his audience instead of being responsible to his investors. His job now is to run the company."

Even Apple Inc.co-founder Steve Jobs, who was known for favoring turtlenecks and jeans, donned a suit in his early days when he was touting his upstart.

More here, "Internet users debate Zuckerberg's future at Facebook." And at Techmeme.

PREVIOUSLY: "Facebook Shares Fall to New Low as Investors Dump Holdings."

Facebook Shares Fall to New Low as Investors Dump Holdings

At the Wall Street Journal, "Facebook Shares Fall to New Lows as Lockup Ends":

Facebook Inc. shares sank 6.3% to a record low on Thursday, falling below $20 a share on a day when some early investors were allowed to unload their stakes, adding further pressure on the beaten-down stock.

Rules expired Thursday that had restricted some early investors from selling down their stakes after Facebook's initial public offering. More than 271 million Facebook shares became eligible for sale Thursday, though holders could also choose to keep some, or all, of their stakes. Any additional shares would add to the 421 million already in circulation.

Facebook declined $1.33 to $19.87 on the Nasdaq Stock Market at 4 p.m. Thursday, after hitting a record intraday low of $19.69.

The prior closing low of $20.04 was hit Aug. 2. Upward of 141 million shares had traded by 3:30p.m. New York time, more than triple the stock's daily average over the past 30 days, according to the WSJ Market Data Group. That was greater than the full-day activity in all but two sessions: the first two days Facebook was public and the day after it reported second-quarter results in July.

"It's basically supply and demand," said Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena. "You have a lot of supply of shares coming to market, so even to those who feel that the stock is priced attractively at these levels, there's no reason to step in and buy."

More at the link.

Twenty-First Birthday of the World Wide Web

It was Tuesday, actually.

But interesting, in any case. At Wired, "Aug. 7, 1991: Ladies and Gentlemen, the World Wide Web."

When I applied to graduate school in 1991 it was all snail mail.

At UCSB, I think it wasn't until 1994, or maybe even 1995, that the university assigned mandatory email accounts. I didn't have my own dial-up connection until about 1997, from AT&T Worldnet service. When I completed my dissertation in early 1999, literally just a couple of my citations were online sources --- from H-Net history reviews.

But since about 2000 or so --- and certainly since around the time I started blogging in 2006 --- the web has been the central source of news and information in my life.

Weird how the technology changes, changes your life, and changes society.

Via Instapundit.

Using Twitter to Identify Psychopaths

From Kash Hill, at Forbes (via Instapundit):

People’s nasty traits have a way of revealing themselves on social networks: in writing. Or rather in how they write. That means an analysis of how someone tweets could reveal whether he or she is narcissistic, Machiavellian, or psychopathic, according to researchers who plan to present their findings at DefCon next week.

What are some of the Twitter stylings of these undesirables? Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word “hate.” Using the word “we.” Using periods. Using filler words such as “blah” and “I mean” and “um.”

(I suspect that an analysis of the Twitter streams of many a blogger would suggest they are potentially a narcissist, a psychopath or an avid reader of “The Prince.” Which may well be an accurate assessment.)

“The FBI could use this to flag potential wrongdoers, but I think it’s much more compelling for psychologists to use to understand large communities of people,” says Chris Sumner of the Online Privacy Foundation, which collaborated with Florida Atlantic University and big-data competition site Kaggle to conduct the study. He imagines the algorithmic models his team developed could be used to compare character traits between different countries based on Twitter.

Continue reading.

Suspect Arrested in Pennsylvania Child Abduction Attempt

Every parents nightmare.

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Man, 34, surrenders in attempted abduction of girl."

Facebook Changed Your Email Contact Information at Your Profile Page Without You Knowing About It

My facebook URL is www.facebook.com/American.Power.

I don't like Facebook all that much, and I set my privacy settings to what experts recommended was a moderate protection level a couple of years ago. I think I've mentioned it, but most of the stuff I get in my message box is all kinds of spam from people I don't really know. They're just Facebook "friends" who I want to be able to see my blog posts. So now I'm reading these reports on how Facebook created email addresses for its users without notification. See, Whitson Gordon at Lifehacker, "Facebook Changed Everyone's Email to @Facebook.com; Here's How to Fix Yours," and Kash Hill at Forbes, "Facebook's Lame Attempt to Force Its Email Service On You," (via Memeorandum).

I just changed my email back to my americanpowerblog email. It took not even five seconds --- and it was so empowering!

Take that Mark Zuckerberg!

Twitter Superstar Kelly Oxford

This lady shows how it's done, at the Los Angeles Times, "Twitter sensation Kelly Oxford hooks Hollywood":

From a snow-crested corner of Alberta, Canada, Kelly Oxford made her Hollywood screenwriting dream come true. She did it without leaving her close-knit family or giving up her free nationalized healthcare. She did it without toiling in Westside coffee shops or confronting painful rejections.

She did it 140 characters at a time.

Oxford, a suburban housewife and mother of three, is a Twitter superstar (@kellyoxford), with more than 350,000 followers. Oscar winners, late-night talk show hosts, even film critic Roger Ebert follow her on the social media service, eager to read wry observations about daily life and celebrity culture.

The worst part about having kids is that they magnify every single thing that's wrong with you. And they wake up early.

If you have a taxidermy marlin and you've never tried to joust someone with it, you're wasting everyone's time.

If the majority of your followers are idiots and you like wine, you're probably more like Jesus than you think.

Those are a few of the 2,900 tweets she's sent since she discovered the medium three years ago.

NBC hired Oxford to write a pilot last fall, Harper Collins will release her first book of essays ("Everything's Perfect When You're a Liar") next April, and in April she sold her first movie script to Warner Bros. It's about a pot-smoking young woman suddenly confronted with the prospect of motherhood.

Her success points to an appetite for humor from a female point of view. But unlike stars such as Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig, who honed their craft in the"Saturday Night Live" writers' room, Oxford found and shaped her comedic voice in online chat rooms and blogs and on Twitter.

Continue reading.

Microsoft Tablet Launched to Rival Apple's iPad

At the Wall Street Journal, "Microsoft Unveils Surface Tablet to Rival iPad":

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Microsoft Corp. on Monday unveiled the first computer it has ever made, a tablet called the Surface that comes with a keyboard and other features designed to stand out in a market dominated by Apple Inc.

The new device, unveiled by Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer at an event for journalists here, is a sign of the new tactics the software giant has been forced to embrace as it tries to make up lost ground in the mobile market.

Microsoft said the smallest Surface tablet is 9.3 millimeters thick and weighs 1.5 pounds, which is similar to Apple's iPad, at 9.4 millimeters thick and 1.44 pounds. The Surface has a 10.6-inch screen compared with the iPad's 9.7-inch screen.

The Surface has a built-in kickstand and magnetic cover, which also acts as a touch keyboard. Microsoft didn't say whether the device would connect to cellular data networks or would be Wi-Fi only.

The Surface will "be priced like comparable tablets," Windows Chief Steve Sinofsky said. Microsoft will sell the tablets itself at Microsoft's handful of retail stores and through some online channels.

Microsoft didn't identify contractors who will manufacture the hardware, or provide much clarity on timing—except to say that the first Surface models will arrive when Windows 8 is generally available, which is expected to be in the second half of the year.

Mr. Ballmer styled the new tablet device as a vehicle to exploit its forthcoming Windows 8 operating system, and a variant called Windows RT that relies on different kinds of computer chips. The software is the first from Microsoft designed with tablet computers in mind, offering an interface called Metro that is designed to be controlled by a user touching a display.

Mr. Ballmer and other Microsoft executives repeatedly use the words "no compromises" to describe the tablet computers they envision running Windows 8 and Windows RT—which means that users will be able to use work-oriented tools like Microsoft Word and Excel programs, not just be used for watching movies and surfing the Web.

Continue reading.

All the latest on this is at Techmeme, "Live from Microsoft's Windows Phone summit." Also, "Microsoft kept PC partners in dark about Surface."

BONUS: At Business Week, "Why Microsoft's Surface Tablet Shames the PC Industry."