Amazon's Kindle Fire will fail, says one expert

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Predictions for the Kindle Fire have ranged from it being the iPad killer to its less expensive equal, but one thing the New York Times' David Streitfeld writes almost everyone can agree on -- it has some kinks to work out.

 Consumer complaints, such as the lack of external volume control and a slow touch screen, were recently validated by a post from "usability expert" Jakob Nielsen.

Nielsen wrote last week that the device would be a failure because of how poor the user experience is.

Part of the problem is its size. Nielsen remains unconvinced that 7-inch tablets will be as popular because they are too small. Magazine publishers and app developers need to design their products specifically for the smaller screen if devices like the Kindle Fire are going to catch on.

"The most striking observation from testing the Fire is that everything is much too small on the screen, leading to frequent tap errors and accidental activation," Nielsen wrote. "You haven't seen the fat-finger problem in its full glory until you've watched users struggle to touch things on the Fire."

Much has already been written about how Amazon loses money on the device itself -- it costs more to make than stores charge for it.

But Amazon's game all along has been to make money by treating the device as an extension of its storefront. If you buy a Kindle, you are going to buy your books, your movies and your music from the Amazon store.

That won't happen if people don't buy the device, but so far it seems that is not a problem. Though it declines to release numbers, Amazon says that the Kindle Fire is its most successful product launch ever.

Some analysts have predicted that robust sales will continue for the Kindle Fire next year, but Nielsen thinks that bad reviews from early adopters will slow the strong sales.

Amazon is set to unveil an update soon, so will it quiet the Kindle Fire's early critics?

Reuters.com

Astronomers Find Biggest Black Holes Yet

 Astronomers are reporting that they have taken the measure of the biggest, baddest black holes yet found in the universe, abyssal yawns 10 times the size of our solar system into which billions of Suns have vanished like a guilty thought.

 Such holes, they say, might be the gravitational cornerstones of galaxies and clues to the fates of violent quasars, the almost supernaturally powerful explosions in the hearts of young galaxies that dominated the early years of the universe.
 One of these newly surveyed monsters, which weighs as much as 21 billion Suns, is in an egg-shaped swirl of stars known as NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in a sprawling cloud of thousands of galaxies about 336 million light-years away in the Coma constellation.
 The other black hole, a graveyard for the equivalent of 9.7 billion Suns, more or less, lurks in the center of NGC 3842, a galaxy that anchors another cluster known as Abell 1367, about 331 million light-years away in Leo.
 “These are the most massive reliably measured black holes ever,” Nicholas J. McConnell, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an e-mail, referring to the new observations.
 These results are more than just cool and record-setting. Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope over the years have shown that such monster black holes seem to inhabit the centers of all galaxies — the bigger the galaxy, the bigger the black hole. Researchers said the new work could shed light on the role these black holes play in the formation and evolution of galaxies.
 The previous record-holder was in the galaxy M87, a member of the Virgo cluster some 54 million light-years from here, where a black hole weighed in at a mere 6.3 billion solar masses. The new black holes, however, were even larger than astronomers had predicted based on the earlier measurements, suggesting that there is something special about how the most massive galaxies are built.
 “Measurements of these massive black holes will help us understand how their host galaxies were assembled, and how the holes achieved such monstrous mass,” Mr. McConnell said.

 Mr. McConnell and his thesis adviser, Chung-Pei Ma, led a team of astronomers who used telescopes in Hawaii, Texas and outer space to weigh the black holes in the centers of galaxies by clocking the speeds of stars zooming around them; the faster the stars are going, the more gravity — and thus mass — is needed to keep the stars from flying away. They report their work in the journal Nature, which will be published online on Wednesday.
 Martin Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, called the new work “an incremental step,” noting that the study of these monsters has been a part of his life for a long time. “It’s good to learn about even bigger ones,” he said.
 Black holes, regions of space where gravity is so intense that not even light can escape from it, are among the weirdest of the predictions of Albert Einstein’s curved-space theory of gravity, general relativity — so weird that Einstein himself did not believe it. He once wrote to a friend that there ought to be a law of nature forbidding such a thing.
 But he was wrong. And some of his successors, like Dr. Rees and a colleague at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking, have spent their careers studying the implications for physics of objects that can wrap spacetime around themselves like a magician’s cloak and disappear.
 Such is the fate, astronomers agree, of some massive stars once they run out of fuel and collapse upon themselves. Indeed the galaxy is littered with stellar-mass black holes detectable by the X-rays spit by doomed matter swirling around them like water in a drain. And there seem to be giant ones in the heart of every galaxy.

 One question astronomers would like answered is how these black holes got so big, billions of times bigger than a typical dead star. Dr. Ma described it as a kind of nature-versus-nurture argument, explaining that black holes could grow by merging with other black holes as galaxies merge to get bigger — “nature” — or by swallowing gas around them — “nurture.”
 “It’s a bit like asking: Are taller children produced by taller parents or by eating a lot of spinach?” Dr. Ma wrote in an e-mail. “For black holes we are not sure.”

 Astronomers also think the supermassive black holes in galaxies could be the missing link between the early universe and today. In the early days of the universe, quasars, thought to be powered by giant black holes in cataclysmic feeding frenzies, were fountaining energy into space.
 Where are those quasars now? The new work supports a growing suspicion that those formerly boisterous black holes are among us now, but, having stopped their boisterous growth, are sleeping.
 Mr. McConnell said, “Our discovery of extremely massive black holes in the largest present-day galaxies suggests that these galaxies could be the ancient remains of voracious ancestors.”
Let’s try not to awaken them.


Nytimes.com

Windows Store For Windows 8: Your Questions Answered

 As Microsoft readies the debut of Windows 8 beta code for February it's sharing more about one of the biggest additions to the upcoming operating system, a brand new app store. Microsoft is calling it Windows Store and it will feature what are called Metro-style apps designed for both Windows 8 tablets, laptops, and desktop PCs. Metro-style apps are primarily for managing photos, entertainment, social networking, and messaging on Windows 8 devices.

The Windows Store, Microsoft said Tuesday, will be the only way for consumers to purchase and install Windows 8 Metro-style apps.
In other words, Microsoft will have complete control over what you can put on your PC when using apps in the new touch-friendly Metro interface. This is a dramatic departure from Microsoft's previously more open philosophy that let anyone download to their PC any software they wanted from any source they wanted.
Microsoft is making this change to ensure Metro-style apps are better protected from malware, bugs and other typical PC problems. The end result, however, is that you must rely on Microsoft's judgment about which apps are and are not appropriate when using Metro-style apps. But in a nod to Microsoft's past, traditional PC software applications for Windows will still be available from third parties in the same way they are available today for Windows 7.
Microsoft's new app store will be similar to Apple's Mac App Store launched in January and available for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.7 Lion. Although Apple still allows users to download Mac apps from outside sources.

Here's what you need to know about Microsoft's Metro-style walled garden inside Windows 8.

When Will The Windows Store Be Available?
Microsoft plans to ship the first version of the Windows Store with the public beta release of Windows 8 in late February. Microsoft had previously been cagey about when the Windows 8 beta was coming.
During the beta period only free apps will be available in the Windows Store. Microsoft plans to roll out its app payment platform at a later date.

Which Apps Will Be Available At Launch?

Microsoft didn't offer many details about apps saying only a select number of developers have been invited to offer apps during the Windows 8 beta period. On Tuesday at a Microsoft event announcing the Windows Store, the company demoed Metro-style apps such as Evernote, eBay, Cut The Rope (a popular mobile game by ZeptoLabs), and digital books from Disney. It's a good bet that at least some of these apps will be part of the Windows Store during the Windows 8 beta.
The software giant is also running a developer contest that will put eight apps from smaller app makers in the Windows Store during the beta period.
How Much Will Apps Cost?
The Windows Store will include free, and paid apps starting at $1.49.

Will There Be Trial Versions Of Apps?

Yes. Microsoft will allow app trials in its store. Developers can set trials to be time-based such as a 7-day trial period. App makers can also offer a feature-based trial that limits the app's functionality until you upgrade to the paid version.
Will The Windows Store Have In-App Purchases And Subscriptions?
Yes. But unlike Apple's iOS store, Microsoft will allow app makers to use their own payment platforms if they prefer. So newspapers could sell subscriptions using their own payment systems without going through Microsoft.

How Will The Windows Store Be Organized?

Microsoft says the Windows Store is "designed for discovery." In other words, the company claims it will be easy to find the apps you want in its app store. But the Windows Store doesn't appear to be organized all that differently from other app stores.
The Windows Store will let you browse apps by category, ranked lists, editorial curation and search. Windows Store app lists will include latest apps, most popular apps, and fast rising. You will also see personalized recommendations for apps based on your download history.
Is The Windows Store Web Based?

No, the Windows Store is a Metro-style app inside Windows 8; however, Microsoft will offer a web-based catalog of Windows Store apps for web browsing. Currently dubbed Windows Store Preview, the web version will be indexed by search engines, and display a complete catalog of apps. Clicking on a link from search results will bring you to the online app catalog. If you are running Windows 8, you will then see a button prompting you to open the Windows Store app to install the program.
App developers can also add a line of code to their sites that will create a "Get the app" button inside Internet Explorer 10 that links directly to the Windows Store. It's not clear if other browser will be able to display these links. Apple offers similar links that open the iTunes application in Windows or Mac, but these links work in almost all major browsers.
Microsoft's Windows Store sounds promising for the software giant and is likely to convince many developers to create Metro-style apps for Windows 8. Not only is Windows the largest consumer software platform in the world, but Microsoft also plans to offer developers an 80 percent cut of app revenue after their app makes $25,000. Most app stores including Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market offer developers a 70 percent cut of app sales.

Pcworld.com

Google and Verizon Battle Over Mobile Payments

It always gets ugly when there’s money involved.
Just days before Google’s next flagship smartphone launch, Google and Verizon are locked in a public battle over mobile payments, with both companies vying for a foothold in the fledgling mobile e-commerce arena.
The issue in question: Whether Google’s e-commerce app — dubbed Google Wallet — should appear on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the biggest Android smartphone launch of 2011. Google says Verizon doesn’t want Wallet on the phone.
“Verizon asked us not to include this functionality in the product,” a Google spokesman told Wired in an e-mail late Monday evening.
Unfortunately for Google, it doesn’t have much time to negotiate, as rumor says the phone is set to debut in the United States this Friday, Dec. 9, on Verizon’s 4G LTE network.
One of the phone’s marquee features is its NFC (near-field communication) technology, which allows the phone to communicate with other NFC-enabled devices and terminals. In theory, NFC could allow you to pay for coffee at a nearby Peet’s, or swap information between two NFC-capable phones. Google Wallet, then, is Google’s e-commerce app that takes advantage of NFC technology, allowing users to buy small retail items with a simple wave of their phones.
Verizon’s anti-Wallet stance is a big problem for Google, as Google needs as many devices running Wallet as it can get. As of today, only the Sprint-carried Nexus S 4G is capable of using the Google Wallet app. This means that out of the 200-plus devices running the Android operating system, only one can run Wallet.
In its effort to push Wallet to mainstream consumers, Google already faces significant barriers — infrastructure installation, retail employee training, weak consumer awareness — so this latest diss from Verizon only makes its job harder.
So why would Verizon want to keep Wallet off of its phones?
On Tuesday morning, Verizon cried concerns about the way Wallet handles security. In an e-mail, a Verizon spokesman told Wired.com the following:
Recent reports that Verizon is blocking Google Wallet on our devices are false. Verizon does not block applications.
Google Wallet does not simply access the operating system and basic hardware of our phones like thousands of other applications. Instead, in order to work as architected by Google, Google Wallet needs to be integrated into a new, secure and proprietary hardware element in our phones.
We are continuing our commercial discussions with Google on this issue.
Verizon’s statements are true. Part of what makes Google Wallet a safe payments app is its integration with so-called “secure element” hardware, essentially a chip that houses your credit card credentials on the phone itself.
Nonetheless, for Verizon to raise concerns about app implementation this late in the game seems disingenuous. “Sprint didn’t seem to balk at the security, and they’ve had it up and running on phones for some time now,” said Greg Sterling, owner of Sterling Market Consulting and a long-time contributor to Search Engine Land. “It seems like it could be a delaying tactic.”
Verizon already has skin in the mobile payments game, so it may indeed be acting to slow Wallet’s adoption on a second handset. Last year, three out of the four major telcos in the U.S. — Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile — came together to form Isis, a carrier-backed version of a digital wallet just like Google’s.
Currently, Sprint is the only major carrier to eschew Isis support — just like it’s the only carrier to offer a phone with Google Wallet. Naturally, if carriers decide to prop up Isis by knocking down Google Wallet, it’s feasible that Wallet will also be barred in upcoming phones carried by AT&T and T-Mobile.
An Isis spokesman declined to comment, referring Wired.com to Verizon’s previous statement.
“This is a question of Verizon not wanting Google to beat them to the punch,” said Simon Buckingham, CEO of mobile app store Appitalism Inc., in an interview. “It’s a power struggle over a major land grab for U.S. territory.”
Isis lacks a number of features Google Wallet offers — not the least of which includes an actual released product. Wallet has been on the market for months now, and launched with the support of Mastercard and a significant number of retail partners. Google is also working with Visa, AmEx and others to bring more card support to the app. Further, Google Wallet works in conjunction with Google Offers, the company’s Groupon-like daily deals program.
Conversely, Isis hasn’t launched, and has yet to gain the support of any major credit card companies. But the carriers have something that Google doesn’t have: Millions of credit card-backed customer accounts. With an initiative like Isis, mobile customers could ostensibly funnel their mobile wallet purchases to their monthly phone bills. That means no new credit card numbers to register, and no significant barriers to entry. It’s a fast track into mobile e-commerce.
But blocking Wallet in an effort to prop up Isis may also be short-sighted.
“It reeks of anti-competitive behavior,” said Sterling. “These days, the moment anyone does anything anti-competitive, you see class-action lawsuits and even possible congressional consequences.”
Regardless of how this plays out, it’s an annoying sticking point for Google’s mobile payments app. Google has made it more than clear that NFC-based economics is the way of the future, and the company will continue to push handset manufacturers into creating devices with NFC chips inside.
Wired.com

Nearly All Kepler Potential Planets May Be the Real Deal

 Virtually all of the alien planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope may turn out to be the real deal, a new study suggests.
 Researchers announced  that Kepler has detected 2,326 potential alien worlds in its first 16 months of operation, including 48 in their stars' habitable zones — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water, and maybe even life, to exist.
 While the vast majority of these planets have yet to be confirmed, 99.9 percent or so may end up making the cut, according to the study. That would mean Kepler's finds to date would more than quadruple the number of known alien worlds, which currently stands at a little more than 700.
Assessing Kepler's false-positive rate.

Kepler detects alien planets by what's known as the transit method. The instrument watches for the tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet crosses the face of — or transits — it from Kepler's perspective, blocking some of the star's light.
Kepler needs to witness three transits to flag a potential alien planet. These candidates are then confirmed by follow-up observations, usually by large ground-based telescopes. Time on such big instruments is tough to come by; to date, about 30 of Kepler's 2,326 potential exoplanets have been confirmed.
Most of the brightness dips Kepler detects are indeed caused by planets, researchers think. But there is a chance some candidates are false positives. For example, a dip could also be caused by an eclipsing binary, a second star that transits the one Kepler's staring at.
In the new study, researchers led by Jean-Michel Desert of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., wanted to put a number on Kepler's false positive probability. So they examined a sample of 34 Kepler candidates using NASA's Spitzer space telescope, which is optimized to view in infrared light (Kepler looks in the visible spectrum).
The team's 34 planet candidates spanned a wide range of sizes and orbital characteristics, Desert said. And Spitzer's observations showed that all of them are likely real alien planets.
"We find an excellent match with what we measure with Kepler and what we measure with Spitzer," Desert said today in a presentation at the Kepler Science Conference here at NASA's Ames Research Center.
The team's analyses suggest that Kepler's false-positive probability is lower than 1 percent, and perhaps as low as 0.1 percent, Desert added. That means that virtually all of the instrument's finds may eventually be confirmed.
Becoming more optimistic?
The new research is roughly consistent with a study performed earlier this year by a different group, which estimated Kepler's false-positive probability at less than 10 percent.
For their part, Kepler scientists have repeatedly said that at least 80 percent of their candidates should end up graduating to become bona fide planets.
But the new study, and others like it, may motivate the Kepler team to revise that estimate.
SPACE.com

Facebook unveils New York recruitment expansion plan

Facebook has announced plans to open a software engineering centre in New York in early 2012.

The firm already employs an advertising team in the city. However, it is the first time the company has created a software base that is not on the US West Coast.
Reports also suggest the social network has bought Gowalla - a location-based "check-in" service.
The moves come ahead of an expected stock market flotation.
Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, announced the New York expansion plan at a press conference attended by the city's Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and other officials.
"We are trying to grow at a clip that will allow us to get the very best people and integrate them," she said.
"We will be adding thousands of employees in the next year."
 The new office will be headed up by Serkan Piantino. He previously led the engineering team behind Facebook's News Feed and helped develop its Timeline feature.
Ms Sandberg did not specify how many of the "thousands" of promised posts would be created in New York.
Social partnership?
Reports suggest the firm has also taken over Gowalla.
Texas-based Gowalla is a two-year-old social network based around the idea of allowing users to "check-in" to locations and share pictures from their visits.
Members used to receive virtual "items" at certain check-in points. However, the company struggled against a larger competitor, Foursquare. In September it refocused its efforts on becoming a travel service, offering "social guides" to 60 cities, including London, Paris and Chicago, based on its members' postings.
At the end of last week CNN reported that Facebook had bought the firm for an undisclosed sum and would move Gowalla's development team onto its Timeline feature.
Timeline turns users' Facebook profile pages into a digital scrapbooks, making it easier for users to view each others' life histories. The feature was announced in September, but has yet to be rolled out to many of the site's members.
Investing in location
Neither Facebook nor Gowalla have confirmed the takeover.
However, the All Things D website reported that Gowalla's chief executive, Josh Williams, had sent an email to investors.
"The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumours... A longer email will be sent soon," it is quoted as saying.
Facebook already had a location-based service built into its mobile device apps and website, but experts say the network may want to offer a richer experience.
"Facebook Places seems to work fairly well but they want to make a big play in this area," said Lee Bryant, the European managing director of Dachis Group, a social media consultancy.
"Location-based services are still in their early stages. Gowalla was interesting and slightly more story based than Foursquare, which Facebook may feel will help it strengthen its Timeline service."
Ready to float
Tech analysts expect Facebook to announce details of a share flotation in the New Year.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the firm could raise $10bn through the sale, valuing the company at $100bn.
It quotes sources saying that the initial public offering (IPO) could be completed by June.
Facebook has declined to comment, saying it does not want to add to speculation about the move.

BBC.co.uk

Apple loses bid to block US Samsung Galaxy sales

 Apple has lost a bid to block sales of a number of Samsung Galaxy phones and tablet devices in the US.
The news follows an Australian court's decision last month to lift an earlier injunction on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country, Bloomberg reports.

Samsung has been forced to modify the design and functionality of a number of Galaxy devices to avoid bans on the grounds of them being too similar to Apple products, but the strategy appears to be working.

"The situation is turning positive for Samsung," said Seoul-based analysts C.W. Chung and Marcello Ahn at Nomura Holdings. "In the best case, Samsung will be able to receive patent license fees from Apple."
Samsung recently overtook Apple as the world's largest maker of mobile phones.
Apple and Samsung have filed at many as 30 lawsuits against each other on four continents since April.

Businessweek