Local man burned up by Apple’s response to iPhone fire

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Kelly was walking through the living room of his Orinda home on Tuesday, Aug. 20, when he heard a loud pop, followed by a crackling sound. He looked over at the small chair nearby on which his iPhone 4 was charging and saw that the device was engulfed in flames about a foot high. Kelly, a CEO of a small market research firm, grabbed the first thing he could find — a newspaper — and whacked the phone with it. The fire quickly went out, but the room filled with smoke, black ash dropped to the floor  and Kelly’s phone was left a melted mess.  “It was scary,” said Kelly, “I shook for two hours.”

But he considers himself lucky. For one thing, the phone wasn’t near anything that could easily burst into flames. And he was nearby and awake when the iPhone caught fire.
“If it had been 12 hours earlier, I would have been in bed,” he said. “I don’t know what would have happened.”
After opening up his windows and doors to try to air the smoke out of his house and cleaning up a smudge on his carpet left by the black ash from the flames, Kelly decided to contact Apple to alert the company to the incident. Because the iPhone was his work phone, he needed to replace it.
After struggling to find the right number at Apple and then being transferred several times once he found one, Kelly said he spent about two hours on the phone with an Apple customer service representative answering questions about such things as the amount and color of smoke the fire generated and whether it was preceded by any sparks. The Apple representative asked Kelly to send pictures of the phone and then to send some more.

A side view of Kelly’s iPhone 4 after the fire.

When Kelly inquired about his options for replacing the phone, the representative told Kelly he couldn’t help him until Apple’s engineers had a chance to look at the information he submitted.
Apple didn’t get back to Kelly until the next day, when the company offered to replace the burned phone with another iPhone 4. Given what happened with his last iPhone 4, Kelly rejected the idea of getting another one. And he considered Apple’s offer insufficient, given that the fire could have caused a lot of damage to his home. He was also upset that Apple couldn’t or wouldn’t tell him what was in the smoke that he breathed in and whether it was toxic.
Apple’s representative said that simply swapping out the burned iPhone 4 for an undamaged iPhone 4 was all he was authorized to do.
“This is a big thing, and you’re treating it like a repair,” Kelly said he told the company representative.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the incident to SiliconBeat.
Since then, the Apple representative Kelly spoke with has called him nearly daily pushing the same offer, which Kelly has continued to reject.
Kelly has been using Apple products since the Mac debuted. Given that, he feels like Apple ought to be treating him better.
“I’m a really loyal person for Apple here,” he said.
From his discussion with the Apple representative and his own research afterward, Kelly believes that the cause of his phone’s fire was a problem with its battery. Lithium-ion batteries, which power the iPhone and loads of other electronic devices, pose a constant — if remote — danger of overheating and catching fire, just like with Kelly’s phone. He believes that Apple hasn’t done enough to warn its customers about the potential danger.

As someone who has been involved in marketing for years, Kelly is disappointed at how Apple has handled his incident. The company could have won itself some positive publicity if it had quickly offered to replace his phone with a more recent model, he argued. “I would be out there telling everyone how great Apple is,” he said.
Instead, he’s grown increasingly frustrated. The company still hasn’t told him whether he should be concerned about the smoke he breathed. And the company hasn’t offered to do anything about the smoke odor that still persists in his home.
On Saturday, as a kind of prank to try to get Apple’s attention, he placed his burned iPhone up for sale on eBay. He also shared his story with a friend who runs a crisis management consulting service. The acquaintance has since used the incident as a case study in a blog post about how companies ought to handle such situations.
Kelly said the incident has made him question his loyalty to Apple.
“I went from being a loyal customer, just wanting to help it not occur again and get another phone to really disappointed in Apple,” he said in the email. “I thought we were friends, Apple and I. Not so.”

Cassidy: Apple iPhone ads are music to my ears

I don't know how I got here, but this is where I am: obsessed with the piano music in the latest iPhone ads.

As a rule, I resist commercials. I relegate them to background noise. I fast-forward through them. I read while they play. And I try mightily to not be manipulated by Apple (AAPL) and its massive marketing machine. But here I am: obsessed with the piano music in a commercial deployed by Apple's massive marketing machine.
The ads have insinuated themselves into my consciousness and now they won't let go. I realized how serious my problem was recently when I went to buy the song (I figured iTunes store, right?) and discovered that it's not a song at all, but a musical score written specifically for the iPhone campaign.
I was crushed.
You know the ads, right? One pushing the iPhone's music feature, another highlighting the phone's camera and a third celebrating FaceTime -- all with slightly different scores. It's the music ad -- the one depicting people moving, dancing and exercising to iPhone-supplied music -- that has its claws most deeply in me. The piano starts out slowly, almost forlorn. And then it builds, gaining energy and speed, until it is joyous, triumphant and I am near tears.
I can't explain it. But that's music. Moving. Inexplicable. Unforgettable.
"It was almost a play within a play," says Regis McKenna, the valley legend who ran Apple's early marketing. "The piano music sort of knitted everything together. It keeps you flowing through it and the music is kind of haunting."
The spot does a wonderful job of showing the emotion people feel when they listen to music, he says, providing consumers with what he calls "emotional information."
And it's powerful emotional information, if it's able to enthrall a buyer-beware cynic like me.
Look no farther than YouTube for proof. The ad has inspired a slew of cover versions and re-creations on the video site, which I've been turning to along with the versions on Apple's site to get my fix. Kind of pathetic, huh?Tyler Sloan doesn't think so. He's a Missouri college student and musician who was determined to play the piece from the commercial known as "Music Every Day," even though he couldn't find a name for it or sheet music.

"Basically, I just listened to it over and over and over, about 50 times or so, until it got stuck in my head," Sloan, 25, says. And then he sat at his piano and went to work. You'll find the results on YouTube.
McKenna sees the old Apple magic in the latest campaign, a magic that went dormant after co-founder Steve Jobs died in 2011. "I think there was a hiatus there for awhile right after Steve's death," he says, "but I think they have recaptured it, I really do, in this series."

McKenna says Apple's employees and brain trust experienced a trauma with the loss of their high-profile leader, which led to an advertising slump. And, he adds, there simply haven't been as many new iProducts to warrant flashy commercial treatment.
Music has never been an afterthought in Apple's advertising. Jobs famously went back and forth with his buddy, Bono, about whether to use U2's "Vertigo" in an iPod ad. Then, of course, Bob Dylan made an appearance. And before U2 and Dylan, the Rolling Stones provided the soundtrack for the rollout of the iMac. But in some ways Jobs and Apple execs preferred lesser-known talents and composers. The products were supposed to be the stars of Apple ads. And so there was Feist, with her own earworm "1234," and Chairlift and Yael Naim; and now Los Angeles film composer Rob Simonsen with his piano suite for iPhone ads.

Tech companies have a history of memorable music in advertising. There was Intel (INTC) in the 1990s, trotting out their bunny people to "Boogie Fever." And Hewlett-Packard

(HPQ) calling on Vivaldi to hawk its TouchSmart PC. Cisco (CSCO) turned to British rockers The Who to invigorate its "human network" campaign, while Google (GOOG) opted for a piano solo, not unlike the iPhone score, for its "Parisian Love" Super Bowl ad in 2010.

Tesla market value reaches $20 billion on optimism of electric vehicles

 

Tesla Motors' (TSLA) market value exceeded $20 billion in intraday trading on investor optimism that Elon Musk can keep widening the appeal of electric-powered cars as the company's sales increase.

In more good news for the Palo Alto-company, June sales numbers showed that in California the Model S outsold Jaguar, Land Rover, Porsche, Volvo, Fiat and a number of American brands including Buick, Cadillac and Lincoln.
Tesla's stock climbed 1.5 percent to close at a record $164.22 in New York, after

climbing as much as 6.9 percent to an intraday high of $173. The shares trimmed their gains after Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S. will hold Syria's government accountable for using chemical weapons. Tesla's market value was $19.9 billion at the close.
Shares of the company, which had its initial public offering in 2010, have surged almost fivefold this year. The 10-year-old carmaker named for inventor Nikola Tesla intends to deliver 21,000 of its flagship Model S electric sedans this year and double that in 2014. Chief Executive Officer Musk, 42, has said demand for the car, priced from about $70,000, outstrips Tesla's ability to make it.

"Tesla's the Apple (AAPL) of automotive -- it's managed to cross the automotive and technology fields to become this hot commodity," said Alan Baum, an independent auto analyst at Baum & Associates in West Bloomfield, Michigan. "Justified or not, the expectations for this company are now very high."
Today's rise may have been aided by Tesla's sales performance in California, where the Model S ranks as the third- best-selling luxury sedan in the biggest U.S. market, and anticipation of overseas demand, said Ben Kallo, a San Francisco-based analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. who rates Tesla shares outperform.
"Deliveries in Europe and taking reservations in China are all helping with strength," Kallo said Monday.
In the year's first half, Model S trailed only Mercedes-Benz E-Class and the BMW 5 Series models in the luxury and sport category in a report this month from the California New Car Dealers Association. Daimler is a Tesla investor, with a 4 percent stake.

By sales and production volume, Tesla ranks among the smallest of international automakers. By market value, it ranks as high as 13th globally, behind Kia Motors and ahead of Suzuki Motor, Mazda Motor and Fiat, the majority owner of Chrysler Group, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
General Motors, the biggest U.S. automaker by sales, has a $48.3 billion market capitalization. Ford Moto's market value of $64.6 billion is the largest among U.S.-based carmakers. Tesla shares trade at about 260 times estimated 2013 earnings, compared with 10 times for GM and 11 times for Ford, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Microsoft said to reassure workers that plan remains on track

Microsoft is moving to reassure employees that a reorganization plan by departing Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer will go ahead. Some members of Microsoft's senior leadership team e-mailed their staff Friday to say they remain committed to Ballmer's vision and the reorganization, said two people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the e-mails were private. The communications follow concern at the software maker that any new CEO -- especially an external one -- won't keep the company as Ballmer laid out last month in the biggest restructuring in more than a decade. Ballmer is refocusing Microsoft on hardware and Internet-based services, in a bid to move the company away from software for the declining personal- computer industry and onto better footing with Google Inc. (GOOG), Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. (AAPL)

"There's going to be more confusion near-term," said Sid Parakh, an analyst at McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle. "It just seems like now there's the question of how's the new person going to look at these changes. From an employee perspective, they are at a point of 'OK, now what do we do here?'"

Tony Imperati, a spokesman for Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, declined to comment.
Microsoft's leadership team also held a previously planned meeting on Friday, said the people with knowledge of the matter. Microsoft's board stressed in statements Friday that a new CEO will execute Ballmer's strategy.

Already behind in mobile and tablets and with new products scrounging up minuscule market share while its core revenue from the Windows operating system shrinks, Microsoft can ill afford to wait and see if a new CEO alters the Ballmer plan. The company's stock is down about 37 percent under Ballmer's tenure as CEO, which started in January 2000. Last month, Microsoft also reported sales and profit that missed analysts' estimates.

Now as Microsoft embarks on a new CEO search, it will also have to contend with retaining employees and tamping down unease that for some began with the July reorganization. Microsoft executives and workers in the process of moving into new divisions and roles don't know if they will be asked to shift again under new management, said one of the people. Some executives unhappy with their new roles may leave after stock grants and bonuses are given at the end of August, said another person.

Microsoft executives have also received an increase in outside job offers since the reorganization and expect that to accelerate as the next CEO remains to be chosen, said another person with knowledge of the matter.
Ballmer's reorganization, which put all of Microsoft's hardware into one unit and shifted the Windows and Windows Phone operating systems under the same executive, was undertaken with the knowledge that a new CEO might end up at the company's helm, said another person with knowledge of the matter. It didn't make sense to put the changes on hold for as much as a year until a new CEO was in place, the person said.

Facebook market value tops $100 billion amid mobile-ad push

Facebook's market value passed $100 billion amid optimism that the world's largest social network can bolster sales from mobile advertising.

The stock increased 1.9 percent to $41.34 at the close in New York. Earlier, it touched $41.94, the highest intraday price since Facebook's first trading day on May 18, 2012. The shares have advanced 55 percent this year, compared with a 16 percent gain in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.
The burgeoning market value is a turnabout for Facebook, which slumped as low as $17.73 in September. Concern about


Facebook's ability to sell more ads for wireless devices weighed on the shares after its $16 billion IPO,the largest technology offering on record. In a sign that Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg is making progress in mobile, Facebook last month said promotions on smartphones and tablets generated 41 percent of quarterly advertising revenue, helped by new marketing tools.

"The market is gaining confidence that Facebook is going to be a viable profit-generating machine in the future," said Laurence Balter, an analyst at Oracle (ORCL) Investment Research in Fox Island, Wash. "People are checking their Facebook page more and more all the time."
Facebook shares are now trading at about 180 times earnings. That's a greater price-to-earnings ratio than all except three companies in the S&P 500, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A higher multiple can signal that investors think the company may report stronger profit growth in the future.

At a market valuation of $100.7 billion, the Menlo Park-based company joins a list of technology companies worth more than $100 billion that includes online retailer Amazon.com, valued at about $130 billion, and chipmaker Intel (INTC), which has a market capitalization of about $111 billion. Still, Facebook remains much smaller than iPhone maker Apple (AAPL), the most valuable U.S. company at more than $450 billion, and Google (GOOG), with a market capitalization of about $289 billion.

Facebook stock is approaching its all-time high of $45, an intra-day record it set on the day of its trading debut. The shares have climbed 56 percent since July 24, when the company reported second-quarter results that topped analysts' estimates. Revenue rose 53 percent to $1.81 billion, topping the average prediction of $1.62 billion. Profit excluding certain items was 19 cents a share, while analysts had projected profit of 14 cents.

As it makes strides in mobile advertising, Facebook is pruning features that are under-performing. The company is phasing out physical goods from its gift-giving feature, which let users buy and send items to their friends through the website. Instead, the service will focus on gift cards, which made up about 80 percent of the program's transactions since it was unveiled late last year, the company said.

Uber, Google confirm $258 million mega-investment

The tech industry was abuzz Friday with news that Uber, the limousine marketplace that's branched into taxis and ride-sharing, had landed $258 million in a massive funding round from Google (GOOG) Ventures.

"Our vision is to build a technology company that changes transportation," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote in a blog post, "and this financing gives us the fuel to make that a reality."
Google Ventures declined to comment beyond confirming the dollar figure -- the largest in its four-year-history. The search giant's venture arm typically invests a total of $300 million a year.
"That's a big check," deadpanned Dana Stalder, a venture capitalist with Matrix Partners in Palo Alto.
According to a Delaware regulatory filing unearthed Thursday by website All Things D, other investors are snapping up another $105 million in Uber's shares as part of the transaction. Two sources told this newspaper those shares are coming from prior investors, not the company.
Stalder said Uber and another hot valley startup, Airbnb, are changing marketplaces in ways not seen since the rise of eBay (EBAY). "Fundamentally, they're doing the same thing that eBay did: making large, inefficient markets efficient," said Stalder, who was an early employee of the auction giant before becoming a tech investor.
Uber, founded in 2009 to let people book discounted towncar rides via a smartphone app, has branched out more recently to include taxi cabs and even allow drivers of personal cars to pick up pedestrians. Uber takes a cut of each fare, and All Things D reported that the company is on track to rake in $125 million in revenue. It operates in dozens of cities around the world.
Rumors of a big funding round between Uber and Google had been percolating for at least a month. Then, the filing unearthed by All Things D showed that Uber had sold $90 million worth of stock to Texas private equity firm TPG at a valuation of $3.5 billion.
That document also said Menlo Park venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, a prior Uber investor, had bought another $15 million worth of the company's shares; Benchmark officials did not reply to requests for comment by this newspaper.
It was unclear Friday which previous investors had sold those shares. An official at Menlo Ventures, which led a $37 million funding round in Uber in late 2011, said his firm was not liquidating any of its stake. Other investors in the company include Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs and a bevy of high-profile angels.
Google chief legal officer David Drummond, who heads the search giant's corporate development activities, will join Uber's board as part of the deal, Kalanick wrote.
Aside from the sheer size of Google's check, there are other noteworthy aspects to the investment. Google Ventures already has invested in ride-sharing startup SideCar, and VC firms typically dislike having competing firms in their portfolios.
Andre Haddad, CEO of a similar Google-backed startup called RelayRides, said Uber's funding round illustrates the sweeping changes technology is wreaking on the transportation industry. Unlike Uber and SideCar, his company allows users to rent out their personal cars to others, but it doesn't let car owners drive people around.
There's not necessarily a clear connection between Uber's business and Google's. Then again, one could say that about most Google Ventures investments, which have ranged from gourmet coffee purveyor BlueBottle to a maker of plant-based fuels.
Some valley observers wondered how the investment jibes with Google's effort to develop self-driving cars. But James Mawson, editor of Global Corporate Venturing in London, speculated that the partnership would provide Google with data insights for that effort -- and perhaps let Uber one day offer rides from robotic taxis.
Indeed, the Kalanick blog said he was attracted to Google because of its "incredibly complementary product suite, ranging from Google Maps to Android to self-driving vehicles."
Kalanick also noted Google's experience working with governments around the world. Uber and other ride-sharing companies have a history of clashes with regulators; in January, the California Public Utilities Commission struck deals with Uber and Lyft letting them provide rides by people not licensed to drive a taxi or limo.
Kalanick wrote that Uber plans to use the funding to expand into new markets "and fight off protectionist, anti-competitive efforts."

The new nokia lumia 625 and 925

 






Nokia Lumia 925 introduced a metal design for the first time to the Nokia Lumia range, with the polycarbonate made available in white, grey or black. A wireless charging cover can be clipped onto the back of the phone to take advantage of Nokia's extensive wireless charging accessories and ecosystem.

Both Nokia Lumia 625and Nokia Lumia 925 run on Windows Phone 8. In addition to 7GB of online SkyDrive storage, the Nokia Lumia 625 has 8GB of in built memory and SD memory card support of up to 64GB, while the Nokia Lumia 925 has 16 GB of internal memory.

Nokia has introduced its the latest PureView camera innovation, new features and third party applications in Lumia 925. The smartphone also introduces the new Nokia Smart Camera mode, coming as an update to all Lumia Windows Phone 8 smartphones. Nokia Smart Camera offers an easy way to capture ten images at once and edit the pictures with options like best shot, action shot and motion focus for creating the perfect high quality image.

Nokia Lumia 625 boasts a large 4.7-inch super-sensitive LCD screen display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and a pixel density of 201ppi, designed for entertainment experience, with the added impetus of an exclusive video content app offering access to a rich cache of over 3,000 movies for streaming and downloading.

Launching the new devices, Viral Oza, Director-Marketing, Nokia India said, "The Nokia Lumia 925 and Nokia Lumia 625 are perfect examples of our focus on innovation and continued investment in delivering truly compelling smartphone experiences to our consumers at every price point."



To refresh your memory, the Nokia Lumia 925 comes with a 4.5" AMOLED display with a resolution of 768 x 1280 pixels. The device is powered by a Qualcomm chipset that packs a dual-core Krait processor at 1.5 GHz and features 1 GB of RAM for multi-tasking.
However, the 8.7 megapixel sensor with Optical Image Stabilization and fF/2.0 aperture, which is already proven to capturing impressive images, takes most of the spotlight. The LED flash at the back allows the shooter to perform well during low light conditions and doubles as a video light.
Nokia Lumia 925 comes equipped with a Smart Camera app, which allows you to capture great quality images in several shooting modes including burst mode, Best shot, Action Shot and Motion focus. Furthermore, the app has the Scalado-made feature that lets you remove moving objects and pick the best face for each person.
Running the Amber update out of box, the Lumia 925 can enjoy the latest goodies from Microsoft's platform as well as a number of Nokia exclusive apps.
You can check our detailed review of the Nokia Lumia 925 that includes photo samples, video samples and pretty much everything else that matters about the smartphone.


The mid-range Lumia 625 also has 5 megapixel shooter at that back that is capable of capturing 1080p videos and a front-facing camera of VGA resolution. The device has a wide range of connectivity options that include Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 + LE and GPS+ GLONASS.

what a wonder mobile machine from nokia.

Apple's struggles in China extend to iPad sales

SEOUL, South Korea -- Apple's (AAPL) grip on China's tablet market has loosened as Asian tech companies increase sales with cheaper Android tablet computers, a market report showed Thursday.

Dickie Chang, senior market analyst at research firm IDC, said Apple supplied 28 percent of tablet computers in China during the April-June quarter, down from 49 percent dominance a year earlier.
The iPad maker was still the biggest tablet supplier in China, its key growth engine, but its momentum has slowed.
Apple sold 1.48 million iPads in the period, up 28 percent over a year earlier, but sales of Galaxy tablets made by Samsung Electronics quadrupled to 571,000 units. Samsung claimed 11 percent tablet market share, up from 6 percent.
Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker, said earlier this year that it aims to double its annual sales of tablet computers, hoping to close the gap with Apple.
China's Lenovo and Taiwan's ASUS and Acer also had a surge in their market share. Chang said these companies benefited from offering cheaper tablets and from consumer familiarity with the Android operating system that is used in many smartphone models.
"If Apple cuts the price of previous generations of product like it did in phones, then more consumers would love to buy Apple's iPad," he said in an email.
China is a key market for consumer technology companies as growth in sales of smartphones and tablets slows in developed countries.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told the official Xinhua News Agency in January that China will become the company's biggest market.

BlackBerry’s Money-Losing Hardware Unit May Force Breakup

BlackBerry Ltd. (BB)’s withering smartphone business means potential acquirers will pick over its more alluring assets, including software and patents, which together may be worth about $5 billion, roughly in line with the company’s current market value.
BlackBerry’s once-lucrative services business and hardware unit would have zero value in a breakup as phone losses erode fee-based revenue earned from each subscriber, according to Raymond James Ltd. If a buyer closed the hardware unit in favor of its own technology, it would cost about $800 million, said BMO Capital Markets. BlackBerry’s patents, software and a secure network are each worth more than $1 billion, BMO said, and the company has about $2.8 billion in cash.

 

 An analyst at Wedge Partners Corp., talks about the outlook for BlackBerry Ltd. following the mobile phone maker's statement that it's considering putting itself up for sale. He speaks with Sara Eisen, Tom Keene and Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance." Barry Ritholtz, chief executive officer of FusionIQ and author of the "Big Picture" blog, also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company appointed board members last week to analyze a sale or new partnerships to try to turn the company around. The value of the hardware unit may plummet further as customers shy from buying a device whose future is up in the air, leading acquirers to gravitate to BlackBerry’s other assets, Brian Huen, managing partner at Red Sky Capital Management, said by phone on Aug. 19.
“You’re effectively killing that business by saying ‘I’m up for sale,’” said Huen, whose Toronto-based firm manages about C$220 million ($212 million) in assets including BlackBerry shares. “Nobody is interested in buying the entire entity. I think they are now in the phase of saying, ‘We will do anything to maximize value, including breaking up the company.’”

Little Interest

Lisette Kwong, a spokeswoman for BlackBerry, declined to comment yesterday about a potential breakup and sale of the company’s parts.
BlackBerry hired JPMorgan Chase & Co and RBC Capital Markets 17 months ago to explore its strategic options as sales of the company’s once-iconic phones tumbled amid competition from Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) Those bankers contacted possible bidders late last year and found little interest in buying the whole company, particularly from private-equity firms, said two people familiar with those discussions.
International Business Machines Corp., made an informal approach to buy BlackBerry’s enterprise-services business in 2012, two people told Bloomberg in August of that year. IBM, based in Armonk, New York, wasn’t interested in pursuing the whole company, the people said. James Sciales, an IBM spokesman, declined to comment.

Android, Apple

The hardware business, which helped fuel net income of $3.4 billion in 2011, lagged behind as the industry shifted to touchscreen devices with a wide variety of applications available for download. BlackBerry’s share of the global smartphone market fell to 2.9 percent in the second quarter from 4.9 percent a year earlier, behind Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone platform, Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iOS and Google Inc.’s market-leading Android, according to IDC, based in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Speculation that the company might be taken private to be restructured or broken up out of the public spotlight accelerated after the Aug. 12 announcement, in which Prem Watsa, a Toronto-based businessman and BlackBerry’s largest shareholder, said he would step down from the board. The company didn’t mention going private as an option at the time.
BlackBerry fell 3 percent to $10.22 at 9:58 a.m. in New York, cutting its market value to $5.35 billion. Through yesterday, the shares had tumbled 11 percent this year, leaving BlackBerry down more than 90 percent from its 2008 high.

Nuclear Plants

“We struggle to assign any value to the hardware business given the belief the most logical acquirer of BlackBerry would likely attempt to transition BlackBerry’s subscriber base to its own competing smartphone products or ecosystem,” Michael Walkley, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity Inc. in Minneapolis, said in an Aug. 12 note. He rates BlackBerry a sell.
In addition to its cash, BlackBerry has smartphone patents, an operating system that powers car-information systems and even nuclear power plants, and a network of secure servers that cater to millions of government and business users. The company had 72 million smartphone subscribers at the end of June.
Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets in New York, puts the cost of shutting down BlackBerry’s hardware unit at about $800 million, or $1.50 a share. He rates BlackBerry a hold.
Nortel’s Fate?
The company’s cash reserves will be worth about $2.6 billion at the end of this fiscal year; its patents and other intellectual property might fetch $1 billion; the network would be worth $1.2 billion; and the software about $1.5 billion, Long said in an Aug. 13 note to clients. Subtracting the $800 million estimated cost of shutting down the handset businesses, that would give BlackBerry a sum-of-the-parts value of about $5.5 billion, or $10.50 a share.
Raymond James put the value of BlackBerry’s patents higher, as much as $1.6 billion. In an Aug. 12 note, Raymond James’s Steven Li said BlackBerry is probably worth about $4.5 billion, or $8.70 a share, if broken up. Toronto-based Li rates BlackBerry a hold.
A breakup scenario is more likely because few buyers want and are willing to pay for all of BlackBerry’s assets, even at the stock’s depressed valuation, Joe Compeau, an information-systems lecturer with Ivey Business School in London, Ontario, said by phone. That means it could be headed for the same fate as Nortel Networks Corp. (NRTLQ) The company filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and sold its main assets in a series of auctions that fetched $7.8 billion for its creditors.

Cash Trove

“What happened with Nortel, where they just started selling bits of it, that could happen,” Compeau said. “There’s not that many players who can extract value from all those different parts.”
Unlike Nortel, BlackBerry has never issued debt and had $2.8 billion worth of cash and cash equivalents at the end of June, more than enough to ward off bankruptcy.
The company reported a loss last quarter and expects another loss this quarter, a sign the new phones do not have the traction with customers that Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins was counting on to drive a turnaround in BlackBerry’s fortunes. The company posted a $646 million loss in fiscal 2013, its first annual loss in a decade.
Sales of the new BlackBerry Z10 touch-screen phone missed analysts’ estimates by close to a million units last quarter. Investors will learn if the possibility of a company sale has scared off smartphone buyers on Sept. 27, when BlackBerry releases quarterly results.

Production Cut

Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in New York, says that may already be happening. Monthly phone production was cut to 1 million units from 2 million units last month, and has since been cut by a further 10 percent, Misek said, citing supplier checks. He rates BlackBerry a buy.
“Leveraged buyout and acquisition headlines will cause enterprises to delay purchases until they have greater clarity on BlackBerry’s future as a company,” said in an Aug. 19 note.

Google Map update brings real-time traffic reports

Google has tapped into the technology it acquired when it purchased Waze in June to bring users of Google Maps real-time traffic updates.

Waze is an interactive system that uses reports from its community of users to provide real-time information on the traffic and road situation. The company was acquired by Google back in June and has now been put to use into Google Maps in an update to the app.
Following a beta test Google has rolled out an update to Google Maps that will let mobile users benefit from traffic reports covering everything from road accidents to closures and delays caused by construction, among many other things.

  Users of Google Maps for Mobile will now benefit from real time incident reports from Waze users. (Google Inc.)

This means that users of Google Maps on a mobile device will see relevant updates on traffic as reported by Waze users appear on their Google Maps app.
Waze users will also benefit from improved search results on the app, thanks to the inclusion of Google Street View and Google Search, enabling Waze users to find local addresses and businesses with greater ease.
These updates to Google Maps appear across iOS and Android in the following countries from August 20: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Switzerland, the UK and the US

Mark Zuckerberg's Personal Facebook page Hacked

Palestinan Khalel Shreateh sits in front of his his computer at his home in the West Bank town of Yatta south of Hebron, Monday, Aug. 19, 2013. After discovering a privacy bug on Facebook, unemployed Palestinian programmer Khalil Shreateh said he just wanted to collect the traditional $500 bounty the social network giant offers to those who voluntarily expose its glitches. But when Facebook ignored his first two reports, Shreateh took his message to the top and hacked into CEO Mark Zuckerberg's personal page to prove his point. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi) ( Nasser Shiyoukhi )


YATTA, West Bank -- After discovering a privacy bug on Facebook, unemployed Palestinian programmer Khalil Shreateh said he just wanted to collect the traditional $500 bounty the social network giant offers to those who voluntarily expose its glitches.
But when Facebook ignored his first two reports, Shreateh took his message to the top -- and hacked into CEO Mark Zuckerberg's personal page to prove his point.
"Sorry for breaking your privacy," he wrote the Facebook founder, "I has no other choice to make after all the reports I sent to Facebook team ... as you

(FILES)Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen during a media event at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California in this March 7, 2013 photo. (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images) (JOSH EDELSON)

can see iam not in your friend list and yet i can post to your timeline." The stunt cost the 30-year-old Palestinian the bounty, but earned him praise -- and numerous job offers -- for being able to get to the boss of the world's most ubiquitous social network.
Shreateh, who lives near the West Bank city of Hebron and has been unable to find a job since graduating two years ago with a degree in information technology, told Facebook that he found a way that allowed anyone to post on anyone else's wall. "I told them that you have a vulnerability and you need to close it," he told The Associated Press. "I wasn't looking to be famous. I just wanted to make a point to Mark (Zuckerberg)."
In a message posted to the Hacker News, a user-driven security news site, Facebook software engineer Matthew Jones said the initial report was poorly worded, although he acknowledged that the company should have pressed for more information.
"As a few other commenters have pointed out, we get hundreds of reports every day," Jones wrote. "Many of our best reports come from people whose English isn't great -- though this can be challenging, it's something we work with just fine and we have paid out over $1 million to hundreds of reporters. However, many of the reports we get are nonsense or misguided, and even those ... provide some modicum of reproduction instructions."
Nevertheless, he said, "we should have pushed back asking for more details here."
He went on to say that Shreateh would not be paid from Facebook's bounty program because he'd violated the company's terms of service -- namely by posting items to the Facebook pages of users he should not have had access to.
"The more important issue here is with how the bug was demonstrated using the accounts of real people without their permission. Exploiting bugs to impact real users is not acceptable behavior for a white hat," he said, using an industry term for ethical security experts.
Jones added that the bug was fixed Thursday. Facebook declined to comment beyond the post.
The bug -- and Facebook's response to it -- has become a talking point in information security circles, with many speculating that the Palestinian could have helped himself to thousands of dollars had he chosen to sell the information on the black market.
Shreateh said he was initially disappointed by the Facebook response but that after being inundated by job offers from all over the world he is pleased with how things worked out.
"I am looking for a good job to start a normal life like everybody," he said. "I am so proud to be the Palestinian who discovered that exploit in Facebook."