Adobe lashes back at Apple’s on lazy remark

Adobe has lashed back at Apple CEO Steve Jobs' comment where he characterised Adobe as "lazy". According to Wired, at an event on January 30 Steve Jobs remarked that Adobe is lazy, Flash is buggy, and the world is moving toward HTML5 anyway. Whenever a Mac crashes, it is most frequently because of Flash, Jobs asserted.

A blog entry by Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch responds to Job's comments. The blog begins taking a hit at Apple's just launched iPad, "Some have been surprised at the lack of inclusion of Flash Player on a recent magical device."

Lynch then goes on add that Flash was originally designed for "pen computing tablets, about 15 years before that market was ready to take off." He writes that Flash is currently used in more than 85% of the top Web sites, including Nike, Hulu, BBC and Major League Baseball. Also, Flash is a critical part of the smartphone market; Adobe is "on the verge of delivering Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones with all but one of the top manufacturers. This includes Google's Android, RIM's Blackberry, Nokia, Palm Pre and many others across form factors including not only smartphones but also tablets, netbooks, and internet-connected TVs." "Even the Nexus One will be Flash 10.1-equipped," according to Lynch.

Regarding HTML5 replacing Flash, he wrote, "If HTML could reliably do everything Flash" can, it would "certainly save us a lot of effort." But because Flash is still enabling more than 75% of Web video, Flash will be around "even as HTML advances."

Incidentally, this is not the first time that Apple and Adobe have clashed. Apple's been resisting user demands to add Flash to the iPhone for more than three years now. On March 6, 2008, Steve Jobs reportedly made another public jab at Adobe, saying that the Flash Lite Player wasn't "advanced enough" for use on the iPhone, and that it performed "too slow to be useful."

Yahoo to sell HotJobs to Monster

Yahoo! Inc plans to sell its HotJobs employment Web site to Monster Worldwide Inc. for $225 million in cash as the company focuses on its traditional properties, including the home page.

As part of the sale, Monster will become the provider of career and job content on Yahoo’s home page in the US and Canada for three years, Monster said today in a statement. The company expects the transaction to close in the third quarter.

Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz has reduced expenses and shuttered underperforming businesses, such as the GeoCities Web-hosting site. In July, she struck a deal with Microsoft Corp. to collaborate in Web search and advertising, cutting engineering and capital costs.

“It’s housekeeping step one,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Financial LP in New York, who recommends buying Yahoo shares and doesn’t own them. “It’s the first part of the non-core divestitures that the company and management has to go through. The real notable part is it took a year to get this done.”

Yahoo paid about $436 million for HotJobs in 2002. The business, the No. 3 U.S. career and development site, had 11.1 million users in December, down 22 percent from a year earlier, according to ComScore Inc. in Reston, Virginia. Monster, ranked No. 2, had 16.5 million users in December, down 10 percent from a year ago. CareerBuilder ranked first.

Last month, Yahoo agreed to sell Zimbra, an e-mail and online collaboration unit, to VMware Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, paid $350 million for Zimbra in 2007.

‘Refocusing Yahoo’
“Carol has definitely done a good job in terms of refocusing Yahoo,” said Aaron Kessler, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers LP, who recommends buying the stock and doesn’t own it. “Whether longer-term they can really turn around the core growth is another issue.”

With the three-year agreement, Monster will make annual payments to Yahoo, based partly on traffic from users, Monster said.

In addition, the company will be able to pursue similar agreements in areas outside of Canada and the U.S., including Europe and Asia. New York-based Monster also will expand its network of newspapers with the addition of HotJobs, which has more than 600 newspaper partners.

“Essentially, the transaction positions Monster to add high-quality, relevant job seekers efficiently, while at the same time significantly expanding our customer base,” Sal Iannuzzi, CEO of Monster, said in a conference call.

Yahoo rose 29 cents to $15.46 today on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have fallen 7.9 percent in 2010. Monster, down 5.6 percent this year, climbed 38 cents to $16.42 on the New York Stock Exchange.

“HotJobs and Monster believe the transaction will benefit job seekers and recruiters alike by allowing them to have access to a larger and more diverse pool of job seekers and recruiters,” Yahoo said in an e-mailed statement.

Apple's bookstore for iPad

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs announced on Wednesday the launch of an online bookstore dubbed "iBooks" for his company's new touchscreen tablet computer, the iPad.

"We've got five of the biggest publishers in the world supporting us and will open the floodgates for the rest of the publishers starting this afternoon," Jobs said at an event during which he unveiled the iPad.

"Amazon has done a great job of pioneering this functionality with the Kindle," Jobs said. "We are going to stand on their shoulders."

Apple unveils iPad tablet

Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off the "iPad" tablet on Wednesday, looking to define a new category of wireless device that will play video, games and all sorts of other media.

Jobs, who returned to the helm last year after a much-scrutinized liver transplant, is hoping to sell consumers on the value of tablet computing after numerous technology companies had failed to do so in recent years.

Called the "iPad," the device is Apple's biggest product launch since the iPhone three years ago, and arguably rivals the smartphone as the most anticipated in Apple's history.

After months of feverish speculation on the Internet and among investors, Jobs took the stage at a jam-packed theater in San Francisco and, with his famed showman's flair, began detailing the device's basic features. The iPad has a near life-sized touch keyboard and supports Web browsing.

It comes with a built-in calendar and address book, Jobs said. Technology enthusiasts had expected to see a sleek, full-color, 10-inch gadget with a touchscreen interface and wireless connectivity, designed for snacking on all sorts of media from videos to games to electronic books and newspapers.

Despite the buzz surrounding the launch and Apple's storied golden touch on consumer electronics, the tablet is not necessarily an easy sell, analysts say.

Consumer appetite for a gadget that sits somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop has yet to be proven, though plenty of devices such as Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader are vying for that market. Apple had been mum, so the market had been rife with speculation about the device. Shares of Apple have generally risen ahead of Wednesday's event.

The stock slipped on Nasdaq to about $201.67, still within reach of its all-time high of $215.59 logged on Jan. 5. As iPod sales wane, Apple is looking for another growth engine and hopes to find one in the tablet. But the move is not without risk. Consumers have never warmed to tablet computers, despite many previous attempts by other companies.

India Inc buys 143 US cos in 2 yrs

The greater engagement of US with India seems to have benefited the former during the economic downturn as thousands of Americans managed to save their jobs when Indian corporates went on a major acquisition drive in the US.

During the last two years, Indian companies acquired 143 US firms across various sectors. While 94 deals were concluded in 2007-08, in the following year when the economy was on the downturn, Indians bought as many as 50 US entities that were on the verge of closure, saving thousands of jobs.

A study, jointly conducted by Indian industry association FICCI and Ernst & Young, said Tata Chemicals, Wipro, Reliance Communications and Firstsource Solutions were some of the top Indian entities that were involved in bailing out US companies in the red.

The report released on Thursday said IT&ITeS, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals were the prime sectors in which most of the deals were formalised. Indian companies from the IT sector have over the years been aggressively expanding in the US market.

The deals were predominantly debt financed with cash being a popular mode of payment. "This trend probably extends from India Inc's traditional preference for cash transactions in the domestic merger and acquisition space," the report observed.

The Ernst & Young report says the boom in the Indian economy in the last three to four years made the domestic companies cash-rich which provided them with access to more capital than in the past.

Interestingly, one of the key factors, as the report cites, behind more acquisitions has been the liberal policies introduced by the government and RBI for overseas investments.

According to RBI data, in 2007-08 the total outbound investments of Indian companies amounted to $18 billion. In the first half of 2008-09, at least 2,000 proposals valued at $9 billion were cleared for overseas investments in joint ventures and wholly owned subsidiaries.

Yahoo to go for weeklong shutdown

Yahoo says it will close its offices from Christmas through New Year's to help save money. The cost-cutting move ends a year in which Yahoo's revenue declined for the first time since 2001.

It's the first time that Yahoo has required most of its 13,200 employees to use vacation time or unpaid leave during the holidays. Only employees performing essential duties will be working from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1.

Yahoo Inc, based in Sunnyvale, California, has eliminated about 2,000 jobs and shed other expenses since September 2008. The streamlining has helped offset a 12 percent decline in Yahoo's revenue through the first nine months of this year.

Several other Silicon Valley companies traditionally close most of their offices during the holidays.

iPhone Worm Creator Hired as Developer

Just like Michael 'Mikeyy' Mooney, the Twitter Worm creator got lucky by getting hired, now first jailbroken iPhone worm creator Ashley Towns aka "ike_x" got a job as iPhone Developer. Recently, Towns had alarmed the jailbroken iPhone owners with first iPhone worm. The first worm created by exploiting the loop hole in iPhone OS surely grabbed attention of employers.

 (image courtesy: Sophos Blog)

Ashley Towns aka ikeeex on Twitter tweeted that he got a job as iPhone Developer. Graham Cluley, security analyst at Sophos Labs, once again criticized this development just like he did in Mooney's case. Cluley pointed out, in the blog post, that the first iPhone worm lead to creation of a new dangerous worm that steals financial information from iPhones and iPod Touch.

Towns will be joining Mogeneration, an iPhone App development company based in Australia.

It is indeed surprising to see the overnight hiring of the worm creator whose prank must've bothered thousands. These young folks exploit the loopholes in the codes of websites or software and then grab attention. And now, with Town getting hired, several other teenagers may get into such nefarious activities to get money or to be hired by some development company.

Not always one can expect to be rewarded for pointing a loophole and high chances of getting behind bars always exist. Finding and reporting loopholes should be encouraged by companies of the affected product rather than letting some third party reap its benefits.

Apple unveils new iPhone

Apple Inc has unveiled a speedier iPhone, but contrary to rumour its convalescing Chief Executive Steve Jobs did not make an appearance. The new iPhone 3GS is twice as fast as its predecessor, and features an improved digital camera and a new service that lets users locate their phones if they have been lost or stolen.

The 3GS will cost $199 for 16 GB of memory, and $299 for 32 GB of memory. The existing iPhone 3G will get an immediate price cut to $99. Among other incremental announcements, the consumer electronics giant showed off a new 15-inch notebook with improved battery life, a $300-cheaper Mac Air, its thinnest laptop, and, as expected, its highly previewed "Snow Leopard" Mac operating system software.

Apple's new MacBook Air notebook now starts at $1,499. The company also unveiled a new 13-inch MacBook Pro starting at $1,199, and a 15-inch laptop with longer battery life, addressing a perennial consumer concern. Apple's stock is historically volatile during the company's June developer conference. It dropped about 7 per cent over the course of the conference in 2008 and about 4 per cent in 2007.

Suspense and speculation had mounted in the months before Apple's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference, with hopes ranging from a cameo by Jobs, out till the end of June on medical leave, to revelations of a game-changing tablet computer.

Jobs, a pancreatic cancer survivor, announced his leave of absence in January by saying his health problems were more complex than previously thought. Despite a slowing product line, worsening consumer spending and an uncertain succession plan, investors have quickly got comfortable with the idea of a Job-less Apple. Shares in the maker of the iPod and iPhone have surged 85 per cent since shortly after the bombshell was dropped on January 14.

Jobs, a college dropout, co-founded Apple in 1976 with his friend Steve Wozniak in a Silicon Valley garage. After a falling-out with the board, he left the company in 1985. Apple floundered, setting the scene for his return in 1997. The company has flourished under Jobs 2.0, rolling out the concept of a computer as a 'digital hub' along with the now-ubiquitous iPod and iPhone.

Source: TOI