Former Apple manager was hiding $150,000 in shoe boxes
Earlier in the month, former Apple employee Paul Devine was arrested and charged with selling secrets to Asian suppliers in exchange for over $2 million in kickbacks.
Devine, one of Apple’s global supply managers, was charged “with offenses that include wire fraud, money laundering and unlawful monetary transactions,” which began in 2006.
Today, federal prosecutors have alleged that Devine stashed over $150,000 in cash in shoe boxes in his home, which were then discovered by federal agents during a raid.
Devine is also said to have been hiding $20,000 in different foreign currencies.
To be released from prison on bail, Judge Howard Lloyd says Devine must transfer all cash he has in foreign bank accounts and post that along with $600,000.
It is unclear how much money will be transferred over, but prosecutors say it is “very significant.”
Devine has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Netbooks with Dual-Core Intel Atom processors hit stores this week
Intel has announced today that a dozen new netbooks will be released this week using the company’s new dual-core Atom processors, the fastest CPUs available for netbooks.
Netbooks are hitting stores from Acer, ASUS, Fujitsu, Lenovo, LG, Samsung, MSI, and Toshiba.
“Acer strives to continually improve on our customers’ total mobile experience, whether it is increased responsiveness or extended Internet interactivity through longer battery life,” added David Lee, associate vice president of Acer’s Mobile Computing Business Unit. “We are pleased to select dual-core Intel Atom processors for Acer netbooks, helping to empower netbook users achieve even more – both at work and at leisure.”
The new powerful processors will give netbook owners better support for gaming, at the very least.
Each netbook uses the Intel Atom processor N550, which also adds DDR3 RAM support with the same battery life as the single-core N450 Atom.
“In their short history, the netbook category has experienced impressive growth,” says Erik Reid, director of marketing for mobile platforms at Intel. “Having shipped about 70 million Intel Atom chips for netbooks since our launch of the category in 2008, there is obviously a great market for these devices around the world.”
Kindle books outselling iBooks by 60-to-1?
TNW has put out an interesting article today on Kindle e-book sales compared to iBook sales, going as far as to say that the Kindle still outsells Apple’s equivalent by 60-to-1.
In June, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said iBooks had already captured 22 percent of the e-book market, a gigantic number given that the store had just launched. Many were skeptical of Job’s number, however.
TNW spoke with J.A. Konrath, a popular author who is a huge fan of the future of e-books, about how well sales are going for him, on both platforms.
Konrath publishes his books on Kindle himself, cutting out publishers that used to take most of his profits. By doing so, and selling his e-books at a very reasonable $3 a piece, Konrath is making over $2 per book sold. When his books were in paperback, he was lucky to make $0.80 for every $10 book sold.
The author compared sales from iBooks, the Kindle, and from paperback: “Publishers might be looking at enriched or enhanced ebooks as their new big-ticket items to replace hardcovers. But the major ebook retailer, Amazon, isn’t set up for video. Kindle isn’t even able to do color yet. That leaves Apple, and according to my numbers Apple is a very small part of the ebook market. I sell 200 ebooks a day on Kindle. On iPad, I sell 100 a month.”
Given an average 30-day month, that is 6000 books sold on the Kindle and just 100 through iBooks, a 60-to-1 ratio.
While this is just one author’s figures, Job’s 22 percent number seems to be misleading, at best.
EMI buys online store provider Digital Stores
EMI Music has just purchased Digital Stores Limited, a company which provides online stores for artists including The Beatles, Queen & Oasis.
The acquisition is a logical one for EMI, which is in need of revenue streams outside of physical and online music sales. Although the business has been improving since the 2007 purchase by private equity firm Terra Firma, they still lost more than 600 million euros last year.
It also dovetails nicely with the recent trend of labels signing artists to 360 deals. These deals give the label a cut of everything from merchandise to tour revenue, and are becoming an increasingly important part of the modern music business.
Owning a company like Digital Stores also has a lot of potential for selling services to artists not otherwise affilliated with EMI. Both artists on other major labels and those who wouldn’t be signing with any major become potential revenue sources.
If they manage it well, this could be a key part of EMI’s transformation from a traditional label to an all around music marketing and artist services company. Of course any of the major labels could have done that already.
The stumbling block has never been capability. What they’ve lacked has been the will to change. As long as executives are fixated on preserving a dead business model that will remain a problem.
This purchase seems like a good move, but the follow through will determine just how successful it is.
Facebook installed on almost every active “i” device
Facebook recently posted to their blog that they now have 150 million people actively using the social network from their mobile devices, including smartphones, MP3 players and tablets.
The Facebook for iPhone app is also now showing as having 103 million active monthly users, which amounts to almost every “i” device ever sold.
In June, Apple said they had sold about 110 million iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.
Says David Kirkpatrick, of The Facebook Effect: “The Facebook application is by far the most important application on both the iPhone and the iPad. Without the Facebook application, my own opinion is the iPhone would never have become as important as it is. It’s the single most widely used application. It’s so heavily used compared to other apps that I have been told by someone who thought he knew the data — this is highly secret data and I don’t know the actual numbers — that more than half of all usage of the iPhone of apps, other than those provided by the phone itself like telephony and email, is coming from Facebook. And on the iPad, too, it’s just a huge, huge part of usage. So in a way, Apple and Facebook are joined at the hip, and I think that’s one reason why Zuckerberg and Jobs have been spending time together.”
Lady Gaga is now the queen of Twitter
Popular singer Lady Gaga has overtaken Britney Spears as the “queen” of Twitter, becoming the most followed person on the micro-blogging site.
Gaga passed Britney and now has 5.74 million followers.
The eclectic artist just became the first person to have 10 million fans on Facebook, the social networking giant.
Lady Gaga moved to the title after adding 700,000 new followers in the last month alone.
Spears surpassed Ashton Kutcher in May, lasting just three months at the top.
Famecount, a social media-tracking site, says Lady Gaga may stay at the top for long, as teen sensation Justin Bieber is adding 800,000 new followers every month.
Cameron Diaz used most often as malware bait
According to security company McAfee, actress Cameron Diaz is used most often as malware bait, with search strings using her name having a ten percent chance of coming up with an infected site.
Dave Marcus, McAfee’s director of security research and communication says searching for “Cameron Diaz and screensavers” increases that rate to 20 percent.
McAfee, as it has done since 2007, compiled the search phrases containing names of celebrities, athletes and politicians trying to calculate the percentage of sites that are tagged as dangerous.
Diaz surpassed Jessica Biel, last year’s “champion,” who fell to third place. Julia Roberts took second, while Gisele Buendchen and Brad Pitt rounding out the list.
“It’s a simple fact. The bad guys read the same news as the good guys,” said Marcus.
Marcus also explained why Diaz jumped so high, as the McAfee list was composed during the month where two of her films were in theaters, “Knight and Day” and “Shrek Forever After.”
Phishers and attackers use the names to trick unsuspecting users into visiting malicious sites, which then installs malware on their computers.
Apple wants to be able to kill off Jailbroken devices
Although it was recently judged to be a legal process, Apple still doesn’t want anyone to jailbreak their “i” devices, and has applied for a patent that would give them the right to “kill” jailbroken devices, as well as “kill” stolen iPods and phones.
The patent is titled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device,” and it covers a number of security measures to “protect” devices from “unauthorized users.”
Those unauthorized users are jailbreakers and those that have stolen devices from other legit owners.
The patent was filed in February 2009, and was just published this week. The application will help Apple identify “particular activities that may indicate suspicious behavior,” so that Apple can restrict those devices. Suspicious activities include “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card.”
Reads the application (via CNET):
In some embodiments, an unauthorized user can be detected by comparing the identity of the current user to the identities of authorized users of the electronic device. For example, a photograph of the current user can be taken, a recording of the current user’s voice can be recorded, the heartbeat of the current user can be recorded, or any combination of the above. The photograph, recording, or heartbeat can be compared, respectively, to a photograph, recording, or heartbeat of authorized users of the electronic device to determine whether they match. If they do not match, the current user can be detected as an unauthorized user.
[More]>>
Firmware update to Samsung Blu-ray player causes playback issues
According to a large number of upset users, Samsung’s latest firmware for their 2009 BD-Px600 players is causing playback issues, forcing owners to rollback the firmware for the time being.
Posters to the CNET and AVSForums say the update to v2.09 has caused all Universal and Warner Blu-rays to lock up at the main menu, not allowing for any playback.
Samsung has told everyone to rollback to version 2.07, and that should be a temporary fix.
There are still some users who are having trouble rolling back, and Samsung says they will have to wait until a fixed 2.09 (likely 2.1) is released “in a couple of weeks.”
That should be good news, except to people who actually want to play their Blu-rays.
You can check one of the support forums here: AVSForums
Droid X 2.2 ROM hosting sites getting cease-and-desist letters from Motorola
Motorola is reportedly sending out cease-and-desist letters to sites that are hosting Droid X Android 2.2 Froyo custom ROMs, forcing them to remove the ROMs from their sites or face legal ramifications.
Reads the letter (via Into):
Pursuant to 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A), this communication serves as a statement that:
(1). I the duly authorized representative of the exclusive rights holder Motorola for Droid X Keyboard Software, know as “repackaged-signed.apk”
The follow URL contains the software which we have confirmed as Motorola Copyrighted Software
http://www.xxxxxxxxx.com/downloads/update.zip
(2). These exclusive rights are being violated by material available upon your site at the following URL(s):
http://www.xxxxxxxx.com/downloads/update.zip
(3) I have a good faith belief that the use of this material in such a fashion is not authorized by the copyright holder, the copyright holder’s agent, or the law;
(4) Under penalty of perjury in a United States court of law, I state that the information contained in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on the behalf of the exclusive rights holder for the material in question;
(5) I may be contacted by the following methods:
Richard Rushing
[More]>>
