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QOTD [Digital Daily]

“Google is very good at ‘I need to solve a problem, I need to buy something, I need an answer. Twitter is more ‘I’m interested in many things, I don’t know what I need to know.’”

– Twitter CEO Evan Williams

By James Ledbetter, Writer, Slate

People who think and write about technology companies for a living are prone to be wrong now and again. Try to find, for example, veteran analysts or journalists who haven’t at some point made a claim about Apple that they didn’t later regret. The technology sector is too dynamic, and the growth of certain technologies too explosive and unpredictable, for anyone to be right all the time. That’s part of the fun.

But there is one company that has been more consistently underestimated than any other, whose innovations, growth, and, indeed, survival have been dismissed and denied for nearly all its corporate life. That’s Netflix. Despite a long-term record of success, the company has repeatedly seen its stock, its technology, and its very business model publicly derided.

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By Eric Felten, Columnist, The Wall Street Journal

A federal judge in Hawaii ruled last month that a man claiming to be addicted to a videogame can sue the game’s maker for gross negligence in not warning him he could become a joystick junkie. Craig Smallwood alleges in his lawsuit that, as a result of playing the online game “Lineage II,” he has “suffered extreme and serious emotional distress and depression, and has been unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing, or communicating with family and friends.”

Mr. Smallwood did not specify how this differs from the condition of the average videogame aficionado.

Silly as the suit may be, it isn’t without legal ramifications. Steven Roosa, a lawyer doing research at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, sounded almost giddy this week at the prospect that a court might chip away at the enforceability of End User License Agreements, or EULAs. These software license agreements often radically limit how, and for how much, customers can sue if they feel harmed by an electronic product.

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By Om Malik, Founder and Senior Writer, GigaOm

Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up to its 160 million existing iTunes users.

No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping.

Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. I think it could have tremendous impact on social sharing and commerce.

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By James Surowiecki, Contributor, The New Yorker

American workers are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. That’s the clear message of flight attendant Steven Slater’s emergence as a “working-class hero,” after he threw his job away with a tirade against passengers and a slide down an exit chute. Slater’s fifteen minutes of fame may be winding down, but his heady time in the spotlight–he was the subject of numerous tribute songs and his Facebook fan page drew more than two hundred thousand people–suggested just how frustrated employees are with stagnant pay, stressful working conditions, and obnoxious customers.

Still, there was something a little surprising about the adulation. After all, the public comprises customers as well as workers, and everyone knows that the contemporary customer is mad as hell, too.

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By Brian Ries, Contributor, The Daily Beast

Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage Wednesday morning in San Francisco, eager to share with the world the latest news on his company’s notorious little hobby—the Apple TV.

After an original generation, four years of neglect, poor sales, and little innovation, the set-top box that plugs directly into a TV is getting a major overhaul. And unlike the company’s other tent-pole product launches—the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad—the Apple TV is rolling out of the production lines primed for mainstream acceptance. It’s $99 price-point is low, by Apple’s standards, and it is equipped to sync with Netflix, ABC, and Fox. It’s not “amateur hour,” as Jobs put it, but comes ready for professionally produced Hollywood content, just like the average Joe Consumer likes it.

But that’s weird. This is not how Apple usually rolls out a product.

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By Tim Bray, Blogger, Ongoing

So, there’s a new kind of Android device in the world. The world still isn’t sure just where it is that tablets are the right tool for the job. That granted, this is a nifty product. And I’m developing my own theory of what tablets are for.

My impressions are based on a couple hours playing with one, which at this point is a couple hours more than almost anyone else. The model I played was not quite production–among other things, the product name stenciled on the back wasn’t “Galaxy Tab”–but close.

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It’s not as mysterious as it seems, this mini-controversy about finding friends on Facebook for Apple’s new social music network.

According to sources familiar with Facebook’s platform, the social networking giant essentially denied Apple’s Ping access to application programming interfaces that would allow it to search for an iTunes user’s friends on Facebook who also had signed up for Ping.

Normally, this API access is open and does not require permission.

That is, unless some entity wants to access it a lot. In that case, Facebook claims it requires an agreement for reasons primarily centered on protection of Facebook user data and, of course, infrastructure impact.

With 160 million iTunes users, say sources with knowledge of the Facebook platform, that could potentially mean a lot of impact.

Others disagree, noting the load would be insignificant and it is just used by Facebook to gain leverage from those wanting to access its powerful platform.

That was one of the bones of contention in the talks that sources said Apple (AAPL) and Facebook conducted. The negotiations about an agreement went awry and the pair could not come to terms.

In fact, at the launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs complained to me about what he called “onerous terms” that Facebook had demanded for the friends connection and suggested using search or email to add friends to Ping.

But, at the same event another exec, Worldwide Product Marketing SVP Phil Schiller, said to me in a video interview that one could use Facebook to find friends on Ping.

In fact, Apple still included the ability to find Facebook friends in its demo onstage and also after it made iTunes 10 available for download.

It also currently claims this on its Ping page: “Find even more music fans with a quick search, by sending email invites, or by connecting to your Facebook account.”

But you can’t actually do that on Ping right now.

Sources said Apple went ahead with a plan to access the Facebook APIs freely, but Facebook blocked it since it violated its terms of service.

When that happened, it seems Apple pulled the plug on the connection with Facebook friends.

But maybe not for long. Sources also said the companies were still in discussions about putting the more robust Facebook Connect feature in Ping.

Because, in the end, it is all about connection.

BoomTown has requests into both Facebook and Apple for a comment.

Earlier today, Facebook said:

“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”

By John Murrell

Take-Two Interactive whupped the tarnation out of its own guidance for its fiscal third quarter today, thanks largely to the success of Red Dead Redemption, the Old West action-adventure game that was released in May and has sold almost 7 million units since. Instead of coming in between $250 million and $300 million, as the company expected, Q3 revenue hit $354.1 million, and non-GAAP net income was 28 cents a share, not the predicted loss of 10 to 20 cents a share. Guidance for Q4 and the full year has been raised appropriately.

Remember the Walkman? Evidently, Japan does, because Sony’s digital music player has outsold Apple’s iPod there for the first time in more than four years, according to research outfit BCN.

Sony’s (SNE) share of the market for digital music players in Japan rose to 47.8 percent during August, surpassing the 44 percent captured by Apple (AAPL). “This is the first time that the Walkman outsold the iPod in monthly sales [since Apple launched the device],” said BCN analyst Eiji Mori.

Sadly for Sony this victory will likely be a short-lived one. With the latest iPod refresh now official, consumers who postponed their purchases in anticipation of new Apple hardware will help the company dethrone Sony once again.

By Owen Fletcher, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co., China’s two biggest telecommunications hardware makers, said they will offer new mobile devices that use Google (GOOG) Inc.’s Android operating system, with ZTE saying it plans to release a tablet computer akin to Apple (APPL) Inc.’s iPad.

ZTE’s Android-powered tablet will be available later this year in Europe, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region, He Shiyou, head of ZTE’s mobile terminals business, said in an interview Thursday. The device, internally called the V9, will have a seven-inch screen, and ZTE later will look to offer similar products in North America, he said.

Meanwhile, Huawei announced four new Android-powered mobile phones that appear aimed at beating the prices of rival Android smartphones.

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While I am sure there is a better video of this on the Apple site, here are the three songs that Coldplay frontman Chris Martin did at the Apple music event, held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco yesterday.

If you look carefully to the left, looking at the stage, you can see Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs grinning away at the performances of “Yellow,” “Viva La Vida” and a new one, which I think Martin said was called “Wedding Bells.”

In one of many very funny remarks he made onstage, Martin–who is married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow and with whom he has two children, Apple (named after the fruit, not the company) and Moses–thanked Jobs and Apple iTunes for helping make some of his songs into hits, noting, “It proves you can market anything.”

Enjoy:

[ See post to watch video ]

Steve Jobs says Ping is supposed to be a “social music discovery” service: You share your musical taste with friends and vice versa. But if you really want to share, you’re going to find it harder than you think.

This isn’t about Apple’s walled garden that keeps Ping walled off from Facebook and other services. It’s about Apple’s decision to wall off Ping from your own music collection.

Steve Jobs’s demo yesterday gave the impression that Ping would link up with users’ iTunes music player and library. But Ping only cares about what you do on the iTunes Store–it has no idea what you actually listen to and like.

If you buy something at iTunes, you can tell your pals. And if you want to recommend something, and you can find it in Apple’s store, you can click on the link there and talk it up.

But if it doesn’t happen in the store, it doesn’t happen at all.

You can see why Jobs, who has made a point of playing up Apple’s privacy bona fides in recent months, wouldn’t want to automatically peek into people’s iTunes collections. And Apple’s “Genius” feature, an opt-in service that does track what you play on iTunes, makes a point of not connecting that data to your name and account information. But it would make a lot of sense to let people choose to open up their library.

Because, as Apple knows very well, most people fill their iTunes collection with music they acquire from every source but the iTunes store.

“97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store,” Jobs wrote in 2007. Hard to imagine it’s changed much since then.

You could go out of your way to tell Ping about what you do with your iTunes collection. But, again, if you’re inclined to do that, you’re probably already doing that somewhere else. Like on Facebook. Or a Tumblr account.

And if you don’t make the effort, Ping will know next to nothing about you, because Apple has blindfolded the service. Another metaphor, via Debcha on Twitter: “Basing my musical tastes on my iTunes downloads is like judging my eating habits by what I buy at highway rest stops.”

Maybe Jobs thinks that Ping users will be happy with rest-stop recommendations. My hunch is that he plans on fleshing it out over time, trading privacy for utility. We’ll see….

[Image credit: Billy Rowlinson]

Hip-hop star and noted role model Snoop Dogg is now lending his considerable moral authority to the fight against cybercrime. He’s teamed up with security software vendor Symantec (SYMC) to host an anti-cybercrime rap video contest.

Dubbed “Hack is Wack,” the competition invites aspiring law-loving lyricists to bust some malware rhymes on video for a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to L.A. to see a Snoop concert and “meet with select members of Snoop Dogg’s management team,” plus every gangsta’s dream: A Toshiba laptop with full Norton security suite (word to your sysadmin, yo).

“We’re trying to get people to raise awareness by making a rap song about cybercrime,” Snoop Dogg told Security Week, noting that his brand will inevitably bring mass attention to this important issue. “Come on man, you know when my team come after you, we gonna get you.”

My God, what an unfortunate alliance this is. I had no idea street cred was so important to the antivirus software industry.

What the hell is Symantec’s PR team smoking, you ask?

Evidently some of the same stuff Snoop is so fond of.

QOTD: Dear Steve: We Don’t Fudge Numbers and We’re Not Your Friend [Digital Daily]

“We think some of our friends are counting upgrades in their numbers.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs suggests Google might be over-reporting Android activation numbers

“The Android activation numbers do not include upgrades and are, in fact, only a portion of the Android devices in the market since we only include devices that have Google services.”

– A Google spokesperson says the company is actually under-reporting them

By Roger Cheng, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Samsung Electronics Co. on Thursday unveiled the Galaxy Tab, its take on Apple Inc.’s iPad, as more technology companies trickle into the nascent tablet market.

Tablets represent a potential new source of revenue for Samsung, which is making up for lost ground in the intensely competitive smartphone business.

Rather than sell it directly to consumers, Samsung will rely on its carrier partners to sell the Galaxy Tab, which runs on Google Inc.’s Android software, comes with a cellular connection, and features a seven-inch screen. The tablet will debut in Italy, moving to other markets as Samsung locks in more carrier deals.

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And just like that the bidding war for 3Par is over. Moments ago, Dell said it would not raise its offer for the data storage provider in response to Hewlett-Packard’s latest $33-per-share bid. “We took a measured approach throughout the process and have decided to end these discussions,” Dave Johnson, Dell’s Senior Vice President of corporate strategy, said in a statement (embedded in full, below).

And so, after a weeks-long pitched battle, HP (HPQ) has won 3Par (PAR). Final price: $2.4 billion.

Earlier this morning, Dell (DELL) raised its bid for 3Par to $32 per share, only to have it trumped hours later by a $2.4 billion, $33-per-share counteroffer from HP. 3Par declared that bid superior and Dell allowed it to stand, withdrawing from negotiations and making arrangements to collect its $72 million breakup fee.

PREVIOUSLY

• Hewlett-Packard Raises 3Par Bid — Again
• Will Dell Bail on 3Par?
• HP’s New Bid For 3Par: $30 per Share. 3Par’s New Share Price: $31.44.
• HP Raises 3Par Bid to $27 Per Share
• After Harried Sofa-Cushion Search, Dell Outbids HP for 3Par
• Dell Has Three Days to Top HP’s 3Par Bid
• Dell Prepping Higher Bid for 3Par
• HP, Dell in Bidding War for 3Par
• Dell Buys 3Par for $1.15 Billion

Dell Declines to Revise Bid for 3PAR, Ends Acquisition Discussions

ROUND ROCK, Texas, Sep 02, 2010 — Dell announced today that it will not increase its most recent proposal to acquire 3PAR, and that Dell has ended its discussions regarding a potential acquisition. Dell is entitled to receive a $72 million break-up fee from 3PAR upon the termination of its merger agreement.

Dell’s final offer to acquire 3PAR was not accepted by 3PAR’s board of directors. Dell’s improved offer included a proposed commercial relationship and an increased break-up fee.

“We took a measured approach throughout the process and have decided to end these discussions,” said Dave Johnson, senior vice president, corporate strategy.

“We will continue to put the interests of our customers and shareholders at the forefront of all our decisions,” said Brian Gladden, chief financial officer. “Our focus is to create long-term value.”

Dell is focused on creating open, affordable and capable enterprise solutions designed to help customers. The company has an industry-leading portfolio of enterprise solutions, including servers, storage, networking and services. Dell’s commercial enterprise solutions revenue grew 43 percent year over year in the company’s second fiscal quarter and is now a $17 billion annualized business.

“We believe our strategy of creating open, affordable and capable solutions resonates well with customers and will enable us to continue to outgrow the industry,” said Mr. Johnson.

The plot thickens!

While two official Apple pages tout an ability to use Facebook to find friends on Ping–its new social music offering in ITunes–which would be very useful, the feature is now not available on the service.

CEO Steve Jobs, in fact, told me at the Apple (AAPL) event where Ping–and more–was unveiled yesterday that the lack of Facebook connection was due to unspecified “onerous terms” that the social networking giant had sought and Apple declined.

Which is why it is odd that Apple’s SVP of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller said in the interview below, which I also did at the confab minutes apart, that “you can use your Facebook contacts to find friends who are also on Ping and hook up to them.”

So what happened? A last-minute yanking of Facebook funtionality, it appears, after it was launched.

BoomTown has inquiries into all the parties, but until then, here is my video interview of Schiller talking about Ping’s Facebook love, before it was spurned in a Silicon Valley mystery and more, from yesterday:

[ See post to watch video ]

Why isn’t Ping playing with Facebook? It’s Facebook’s fault, says Apple CEO Steve Jobs: The social network demanded “onerous terms” to connect with Apple’s social music play.

But clearly there’s more to the story.

Because while Facebook isn’t connected to Ping right now, it had been up through the service’s launch last night. And even for some time after that.

When Jobs demoed the service onstage yesterday, screenshots showed an ability to invite Facebook friends via the “Facebook Connect” service, as Business Insider’s Dan Frommer noted. And in an interview with Kara Swisher following the event, Apple marketing boss talked up the Facebook Connect option.

And, in fact, Apple’s promotional Ping page still mentions the ability to “find even more music fans with a quick search, by sending email invites, or by connecting to your Facebook account.”

And for a brief period after the service opened last night, new users did get a chance to invite friends via Facebook — you can still see the Facebook app page here.

I’m not sure that the service ever worked, though: When I tried the Facebook option, I got this puzzling error message: “We are unable to find any Facebook friends that you are not following on iTunes Ping. Check again soon.”

So. Anyone at Apple, or Facebook, want to clarify what happened?

The bidding war over 3Par is beginning to look more like a game of Texas Hold’em.

This morning Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) again raised its bid for the data storage provider, trumping a superior bid made by Dell (DELL) just hours before.

HP offered $33 a share for 3Par (PAR), surpassing Dell’s counteroffer of $32 a share and pushing the total value of the deal to $2.4 billion. HP’s latest bid is more than three times 3Par’s $9.65 closing price on Aug. 13, the day before Dell’s first bid was revealed.

PREVIOUSLY

• Will Dell Bail on 3Par?
• HP’s New Bid For 3Par: $30 per Share. 3Par’s New Share Price: $31.44.
• HP Raises 3Par Bid to $27 Per Share
• After Harried Sofa-Cushion Search, Dell Outbids HP for 3Par
• Dell Has Three Days to Top HP’s 3Par Bid
• Dell Prepping Higher Bid for 3Par
• HP, Dell in Bidding War for 3Par
• Dell Buys 3Par for $1.15 Billion