Apple tops $500 for first time

How do you like them Apples?

Shares in Apple, the world’s most valuable company, reached new heights yesterday, closing above $500 a share for the first time in its more than 30 years as a publicly traded company.

With the iPad 3 likely to be unveiled next month, Wall Street analysts expect the tech titan’s stock, already up 40 percent in the last 12 months, to continue its ascent.

Some even see the stock approaching $600 — and a $1 trillion valuation.

Apple, with its $468.6 billion market cap, passed oil giant ExxonMobil and slipped into the No. 1 spot last month.

Yesterday, Apple shares closed at $502.60 — more than the price of the cheapest iPad — after the stock had flirted with the $500 milestone for much of last week.

CEO Tim Cook’s company has been surging since it reported blow-out first-quarter earnings two weeks ago, topping more than $100 billion in sales.

Some of the excitement around Apple has been fueled by analysts, who are hoping the company finally announces a first-of-its-kind dividend, since Apple is sitting on a cash pile that is close to $100 billion.

Still, two-thirds of that cash pile is overseas, said analyst Colin Gillis with BGC Partners, who surmised that if a dividend comes it would likely be on the low end, close to 1 percent.

“If there’s any disappointment there could be a pullback,” he said.

Nypost.com

CES: GM Wants To Turn Your Car Into An iPhone On Wheels

The Detroit, Michigan-based automaker  announced it will debut its new CUE infotainment software on the Cadillac ATS — a new BMW 3-series fighter GM introduced at the Detroit Auto show earlier Sunday.

Short for Cadillac User Experience, CUE is built around an 8-inch touch screen, kind off like an iPad. ”Customers want things that are elegant, intuitive, and simple to use,” Cadillac Global Marketing Director Jim Vurpillat told a crowd of journalists.

There’s more to GM’s plans than just pretty software however. GM also said it will open up its OnStar telematics service to outside developers.

The first outside developer to take advantage of the service, GM-backed startup RelayRides, plans to let RelayRides users unlock a car they’re renting from other RelayRide users with their smartphone.

CUE is based on Linux, the same open-source software running many of the world’s servers. Cars last three to four to five years, so Cue’s open, Linux-based architecture will let GM keep the CUE’s interface up to date, Vurpillat said.

GM showed a video showing a user accessing Pandora on his car’s center console, plugging gadgets into the car’s USB port, and generally treating the thing like a smartphone with a stick shift.

Unlike an iPhone, of course, you can’t put a Cadillac in your pocket. Like Apple, however, GM is tying its software to a suite of cloud services, and opening its software up to outside developers.

An OnStar cloud platform called ‘ATOMS,’ is already used by more than 250,000 customers who use GM’s ‘RemoteLink’ smartphone software, which let’s users tap into GM’s OnStar service to check their cars diagnostics or unlock their car door with a mobile phone.

GM wants to open that platform up, said Nick Pudar, vice president of planning and business development for OnStar. During the first half of 2012, OnStar will make its application-programming interfaces available to developers.

Third-party developers will get access to ATOM-based services, such as vehicle location, diagnostics, and remote capabilities and controls.

That will allow car sharing service RelayRides to let one of its customers open up a car they’re renting from another RelayRides customer with their smartphone.

And if the car is stolen, GM’s OnStar service can even be used to slow the stolen car down and stop it.

For more coverage of the 2012 Consumer Electronics show, see forbes.com/CES

Forbes.com

NORAD Santa trackers having record holiday

 Santa's piling up more than presents this year. The big man's trackers at NORAD say Santa Claus is also breaking records this Christmas Eve.

Volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado were fielding 4,000 calls an hour Saturday morning, on pace to break a record. Also, Santa's NORAD Facebook page exceeded 840,000 "likes" by midmorning. Last year, Santa had 716,000 "likes."

Volunteers at NORAD Tracks Santa said kids started calling at 4 a.m. Saturday to find out where Santa was.
"The phones are ringing like crazy," Lt. Cmdr. Bill Lewis said Saturday.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command has been telling anxious children about Santa's whereabouts every year since 1955. That was the year a Colorado Springs newspaper ad invited kids to call Santa on a hotline, but the number had a typo, and dozens of kids wound up talking to the Continental Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD's predecessor.
The officers on duty played along and began sharing reports on Santa's progress. It's now a deep-rooted tradition at NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canada command that monitors the North American skies and seas from a control center at Peterson.
NORAD's Santa updates are blowing up on social media, too. In addition to the website and Facebook and Twitter pages, Santa this year has a new tracking app for smart phones. The app includes the Elf Toss, a game similar to Angry Birds.
On the Net:

http://www.noradsanta.org/


Ap.org

IBM's Five Predictions for the Next Five Years

Biometric passwords? Mind-reading headsets? Junk mail you'll look forward to? As with all predictions, the answer is "maybe"

In each of the past five years, IBM has come up with a list of five innovationsit believes will become popular within five years. In this, the sixth year, IBM has come up with the following technologies it thinks will gain traction. Hold on to your sci-fi novels, because some of these are pretty far out there. And some of them, well, I wish we had them today.

• People power will come to life. Advances in technology will allow us to trap the kinetic energy generated (and wasted) from walking, jogging, bicycling, and even from water flowing through pipes. A bicycle charging your iPhone? There’s nothing wrong with that, though I think it might be a while before we see this actually become a mainstream practice.

• You will never need a password again. Biometrics will finally replace the password and thus redefine the word “hack.” Jokes aside, IBM believes multifactor biometrics will become pervasive. “Biometric data—facial definitions, retinal scans, and voice files—will be composited through software to build your DNA-unique online password.” Based on the increasing hours we spend online, I would say we need such solutions to come to market ASAP.

• Mind reading is no longer science fiction. Scientists are working on headsets with sensors that can read brain activity and recognize facial expressions, excitement, and more without needing any physical inputs from the wearer. “Within [five] years, we will begin to see early applications of this technology in the gaming and entertainment industry,” IBM notes. It will also be good for folks who have suffered from strokes and have brain disorders. Personally, I’m not sure this is commercially viable within the stated five years.

• The digital divide will cease to exist. Mobile phones will make it easy for even the poorest of poor to get connected. In the U.S. and other parts of the world, this is already happening.

• Junk mail will become priority mail. “In five years, unsolicited advertisements may feel so personalized and relevant it may seem that spam is dead. At the same time, spam filters will be so precise you’ll never be bothered by unwanted sales pitches again,” notes IBM. I have just one thing to say about this prediction: OMG.

HOW GOOD ARE IBM PREDICTIONS?

New predictions aside, IBM’s track record of predictions over the past five years has been somewhat mixed. Let’s take a step back to 2006 and look at its predictions:

• We will be able to access health care remotely, from just about anywhere in the world.
• Real-time speech translation—once a vision only in science fiction—will become the norm.
• There will be a 3D Internet.
• Technologies the size of a few atoms will address areas of environmental importance.
• Our mobile phones will start to read our minds.

Remote health care is a reality, but real-time speech translation is, well, not quite as real. The 3D Internet: We’re still waiting for that, but those mobile phones are becoming awfully smart. As I said, it’s mixed in its predictions. In 2007, IBM correctly predicted driving would be assisted by software and your phones would become “your wallet, ticket broker, concierge, bank, shopping buddy, and more.” But that was right after the iPhone was launched.

As another example, IBM in 2009 predicted city buildings would “sense and respond” like living organisms. That sensor-based future is finally unfolding two years later. That same year, it predicted cars and buses would run on hydrogen and biofuels. Well, that’s half-true. We have some places where some buses and some cars are running on biofuels. Its prediction that cities will develop a healthier immune system due to connectedness, however, is quite far from reality—although we still have a little more than two years to go before we can say IBM got those wrong.

Bottom line: IBM’s Five in Five makes a nice cheat sheet to keep an eye on the future and also focus on key trends that might go big. I can’t wait for the 2012 edition.

Businessweek.com

5 Moves Microsoft Must Make In 2012

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's to-do list for 2012 should include acquisitions, a strong tablet launch, and a move into services.

 Microsoft remains the world's biggest software company, but it might not be for long unless it reestablishes itself, and its brands, as the products of choice for tech users in the consumer and enterprise markets. Once the unquestioned king of personal computing, Microsoft has become almost irrelevant in key markets like mobility and search, and even seemingly once unassailable franchises like Windows and Explorer are under threat.

Here are some moves the company must make next year if it hopes to regain some relevance.

1. Launch a tablet.

There may be no more pointed an indicator of what ails Microsoft than its fumbling when it comes to tech's hottest market--tablets. At the Consumer Electronics Show way back in January, 2010, CEO Steve Ballmer showed off a range of prototypes meant to assure the public that Windows would be a player in slates. But those efforts turned out to be so kludgy that even longtime ally HP ditched its plans for a Windows tablet and opted for webOS.

Two years later, Microsoft has yet to launch a legitimate entry. What's worse, there are indications that it could be another two years before a capable Windows tablet hits the mainstream.

By then, rivals like Apple and Google will have third-generation systems into the channel, and even peripheral players like Amazon and Barnes & Noble will have carved out solid niches. Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder believes that if Microsoft can't get a solid contender into the tablet market until 2013, it might be too late. "On tablets, Windows 8 is going to be very late to the party," said Gownder.

Microsoft needs to get a tablet out next year, not in 2013, or the race may be over.

2. Ship Windows 8.

On a similar note, Microsoft needs to get Windows 8 out the door next year. There can't be Windows 8 tablets without Windows 8, and the moribund PC market also could use the new OS in time for the 2012 holiday season. Consumers and even many business pros will only continue to purchase traditional desktops and laptops to the extent that they mirror the experience they have gotten used to on their smartphones and laptops, an experience that is all about touch and apps.

With its Metro interface, borrowed from Windows Phone, Windows 8 presents a more mobile look and feel, whether it's running on x86 or ARM chips. As Windows chief Steven Sinofsky noted at Microsoft's recent BUILD conference, many attendees who were given touch-based systems to play with continued to try to interact with their non-touch PCs by pressing the screen.

"People say touch is only for small devices or lightweight things. I promise you the minute you use a touch device with Windows 8, by the time you go back to your laptop or desktop you're going to be hitting that screen. You'll have fingerprints all over your monitor if it doesn't support touch," Sinofsky said

3. Jump into services.

Microsoft will ultimately need to come to terms with the fact that its customers are becoming less willing to pay for the type of software from which it makes most of its money--operating systems and desktop applications. Nobody buys an iPad because it runs iOS, they buy it for the Apple experience. Android does have some brand recognition as an OS, but it's free. Microsoft's other big software cash cow, Office, is also feeling pressure from free or low-cost offerings in the form of Google Apps and, to a lesser extent, from OpenOffice-based products like IBM's Lotus Symphony.\

o compensate, Microsoft needs to ramp up its efforts in enterprise tech services. The explosion in new computing form factors and architectures, from mobility to social networking and the cloud, means integration will remain a major challenge for IT shops for the foreseeable future, and they'll need help with all that heavy lifting and should be willing to pay for it. At the same time, all this Web 2.0 stuff has many companies rethinking their business models, a trend that provides an opportunity for high-end business consulting services.

IBM successfully made the transition to services and consulting once it saw that PCs were becoming a commodity. Microsoft needs to follow the same path now that software is becoming commoditized. It has the cash to pursue an acquisition of an Accenture, with whom it already has a services joint venture, or a Cap Gemini.

4. Lead With Xbox.

Despite its troubles over the past year, Microsoft has had one resounding success--the Xbox Kinect system. The company sold 10 million units in the four months after it launched the device on Nov. 4, 2010. Kinect features motion and speech recognition technologies that let users control the Xbox through physical gestures and vocal commands. In addition to filling Microsoft's coffers, Kinect has elevated the Xbox brand into the leading gaming and entertainment system.

The company needs to leverage that brand recognition across its other lines. It could start by launching a line of consumer phones and tablets that, even if they run Windows under the hood, carry the Xbox livery. That could be the beginnings of a strategy under which Xbox is the face of Microsoft's consumer products, while Windows remains the brand for the enterprise. In the consumer space, Windows has become your father's Oldsmobile, but in business it remains a trusted name that implies security and compatibility.

5. Take the Yahoo plunge.

Microsoft has toyed with acquiring Yahoo for the past several years, at one time making an offer as high as $33 per share. The Web portal could now be acquired for less than half of that. Reports indicate that Redmond may in fact be part of a consortium, which also includes Silver Lake and TPG Capital, that is looking to acquire a chunk of Yahoo.

Microsoft should go all the way. It already handles search for Yahoo via Bing, and despite Yahoo's missteps over the past couple of years, it remains the Web's most popular portal. Microsoft's own MSN, meanwhile, is an also ran. Yahoo could give Microsoft a much needed (and far less confusing) platform to pitch cloud services such as e-mail and apps to consumers and small businesses.

The new year is just around the corner Mr. Ballmer--have at it.

Informationweek.com

Are there Higgs bosons in space?

Rather than using a 17-mile-long collider, can't we just find them out there?

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, report that they're hot on the trail of an elusive elementary particle known as the Higgs boson. It's only a matter of time before they'll have the infamous "God particle" in handcuffs, they say. But after years of particle- and head-bashing at the LHC, one burning question is whether there's an easier way to do this. Instead of constructing an 17-mile-long, high-energy collider to generate a Higgs particle from scratch, couldn't we just go look for one in nature?

And if so, where in space might it be?

John Gunion, first author of "The Higgs Hunter's Guide" (Basic Books, 1990) and a professor of physics at the University of California, Davis, said Higgs bosons regularly pop into existence all over space., 

Quantum fluctuations — momentary bursts of energy from nowhere that are permitted by the rules of quantum mechanics — cause pairs of the particles to spontaneously arise out of the vacuum, then annihilate each other an instant later.

Because these freebie Higgs have extremely high energies, the rules of quantum mechanics dictate that they don't get to stick around for as long as lesser particles would. So, if you're a Higgs hunter, how much time do you have to catch these bosons before they disappear? "Shorter than 1-trillionth-of-1-trillionth of a second," Gunion said.

Gordon Kane, a professor of physics at the University of Michigan and co-author of "The Higgs Hunter's Guide," said that a quantum fluctuation is rare in any one place. "But there are lots of places it can happen (all of space), so altogether it happens pretty often, but you aren't there to see it."

Aside from strange quantum effects, there are several other events in space that produce Higgs bosons, the physicists said.

"Black holes give off pairs of Higgs bosons, among many other things," Gunion said. "They produce these Higgs particles at their horizons, and if you put a detector there, you would see them. But the detector would be gobbled up pretty quick by the black hole."

Unfortunately we can't just aim our earthbound telescopes at black holes and hope to glimpse a Higgs, because the particle will have decayed long before getting here, he added. 

Supernovas, the explosions of dying stars, produce bursts of particles that are moving fast enough to create Higgs bosons when they collide. (Imagine the particle collisions at the LHC, but in space.)

However, getting a close look at a Higgs from a supernova is just as tricky as peering at one from a black hole: Your detector would have to be sitting next to the supernova aimed at exactly the right place at exactly the right time to see the Higgs before it decays. And then, of course, the detector would get destroyed by the stellar explosion.

Lastly, perhaps the deepest question of all is why Higgs bosons — which draw so much attention from scientists because they are the particles that imbue all other particles with their mass — don't exist everywhere all the time. In short, if there's no Higgs in me, why do I not weigh zero pounds?

"That's a complicated question," said Craig Blocker, a Higgs-hunting physicist at Brandeis University. "It has to do with quantum mechanics. In quantum theory, all particles correspond to what we call fields. For example, electromagnetic fields are what photons (particles of light) correspond to, and the Higgs particle corresponds to the Higgs field. Each particle has its own field, and most fields are everywhere all the time. But you have to get enough energy to excite those fields so that it looks like a particle to us. Otherwise we don't know the field is there."

Quantum fluctuations, black holes and supernovas all have what it takes to make the Higgs field look like a Higgs particle. However, because these events happen too far away and for too short a time, it seems that the LHC is our best bet.

Msn.com

New operating system for space: High-tech tycoons

 SEATTLE (AP) — The tycoons of cyberspace are looking to bankroll America's resurgence in outer space, reviving "Star Trek" dreams that first interested them in science.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen made the latest step Tuesday, unveiling plans for a new commercial spaceship that, instead of blasting off a launch pad, would be carried high into the atmosphere by the widest plane ever built before it fires its rockets.

He joins Silicon Valley powerhouses Elon Musk of PayPal and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc. in a new private space race that attempts to fill the gap left when the U.S. government ended the space shuttle program.

Musk, whose Space Exploration Technologies will send its Dragon capsule to dock with the International Space Station in February, will provide the capsule and booster rocket for Allen's venture, which is called Stratolaunch. Bezos is building a rival private spaceship.

Allen is working with aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan, who collaborated with the tycoon in 2004 to win a $10 million prize for the first flight of a private spaceship that went into space but not orbit.

Allen says his enormous airplane and spaceship system will go to "the next big step: a private orbital space platform business."

The new system is "a radical change" in how people can get to space, and it will "keep America at the forefront of space exploration," Allen said.

Their plane will have a 380-foot wingspan — longer than a football field and wider than the biggest aircraft ever, Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose.

It will launch a space capsule equipped with a booster rocket, which will send the spacecraft into orbit. This method saves money by not using rocket fuel to get off the ground. The spaceship may hold as many as six people.

"When I was growing up, America's space program was the symbol of aspiration," said Allen, who mentioned his love of science fiction and early human spaceflights. "For me, the fascination with space never ended. I never stopped dreaming what might be possible."

For those attracted to difficult technical challenges, space is the ultimate challenge, Allen said.

"It's also the ultimate adventure. We all grew up devouring science fiction and watching Mercury and Gemini, Apollo and the space shuttle. And now we are able to be involved in moving things to the next level," he said, adding that he admires people like his former Microsoft colleague Charles Simonyi who have gone into space to experience it.

Allen is not alone in having such dreams, and the money to gamble on making them come true.

Bezos set up the secretive private space company Blue Origin, which has received $3.7 million in NASA startup funds to develop a rocket to carry astronauts. Its August flight test ended in failure.

"Space was the inspiration that got people into high-tech ... at least individuals in their 40s and 50s," said Peter Diamandis, who created the space prize Allen won earlier and is a high-tech mogul-turned space business leader himself. "Now they're coming full circle."

Diamandis helped found a company that sends tourists to space for at least $25 million a ride, and seven of the eight rides involved high-tech executives living out their space dreams. Simonyi paid at least $20 million apiece for two rides into orbit and attended Allen's Tuesday news conference, saying he wouldn't mind a third flight.

"Space has a draw for humanity," not just high-tech billionaires, Simonyi said, but he acknowledged that most people don't have the cash to take that trip.

Space experts welcome the burst of high-tech interest in a technology that 50 years ago spurred the development of computers.

"Space travel the way we used to do it has a '50s and '60s ring to it," said retired George Washington University space policy professor John Logsdon. "These guys have a vision of revitalizing a sector that makes it 21st century."

But Logsdon said the size of the capsule and rocket going to space seemed kind of small to him, only carrying 13,000 pounds. It didn't seem like a game-changer, he said.

Stratolaunch's air-launch method is already used by an older rocket company, Orbital Sciences Corp., to launch satellites. It's also the same method used by the first plane to break the sound barrier more than 50 years ago.

Stratolaunch, to be based in Huntsville, Ala., bills its method of getting to space as "any orbit, any time." Rutan will build the carrier aircraft, which will use six 747 engines. The first unmanned test flight is tentatively scheduled for 2016.

NASA, in a statement, welcomed Allen to the space business, saying his plan "has the potential to make future access to low-Earth orbit more competitive, timely, and less expensive."

Unlike its competitors, Allen's company isn't relying on startup money from NASA, which is encouraging private companies to take the load of hauling cargo and astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station. The space agency, which retired the space shuttle fleet earlier this year, plans to leave that more routine work to private companies and concentrate on deep space human exploration of an asteroid, the moon and even Mars.

Allen said his interest comes not just because of the end of the shuttle program or changes in government funding for space, but he does see an incredible opportunity right now for the private sector to move the needle on space travel.

Allen's company is looking at making money from tourists and launching small communications satellites, as well as from NASA and the Defense Department, said former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, a Stratolaunch board member who spoke at a Tuesday news conference.

Just three months ago, Griffin was testifying before Congress that he thought the Obama administration's reliance on private companies for space travel "does not withstand a conventional business case analysis."

This is different because it's private money, with no help or dependence on government dollars, said Griffin, who served under President George W. Bush.

Allen and Rutan collaborated on 2004's SpaceShipOne, which was also launched in the air from a special aircraft in back-to-back flights. Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic licensed the technology and is developing SpaceShipTwo to carry tourists to space. But Allen's first efforts were more a hobby, while this would be more a business, Logsdon said.

SpaceShipOne cost $28 million, but this will cost much more, officials said.

Allen left Microsoft Corp. in 1983, and has pursued many varied interests since then. He's the owner of the Seattle Seahawks football team as well as the NBA's Portland Trailblazers. He also founded a Seattle museum that emphasizes science fiction.

Allen said this venture fits with his technology bent.

"I'm a huge fan of anything to push the boundaries of science," Allen said.

Ap.org