Author: Terren

Sometimes you’re watching a random TV show on a random channel and you wonder, who was she again? What show was she in? And then you forget about it and those questions are left unanswered, your brain untapped. With VideoSurf, the app can identify the show you’re watching and give you info about everybody in it. More »

The first quarterly earnings report post-Wake Up Call have just been published for Canada’s own Research in Motion, and while the cash is still flowing, investors and analysts alike aren’t feeling too rosy about the future. Despite Q2 revenue of $4.2 billion and a GAAP net income of $329 million, RIM’s stock plummeted nine percent following the news. Why? That reality was at the lowest end of estimates, and as we’ve seen, it takes a blowout quarter to please the folks on Wall Street. Nevertheless, the company’s touting a subscriber base that ballooned 40 percent year-over-year (surpassing 70m total), and while it’s quick to trumpet the rollout of seven new smartphones, not a one of them managed to astound the QNX-desiring critics. The report also notes that 10.6 million handsets were moved in the quarter, around $780 million was invested as “part of a consortium of companies that successfully bid to acquire intellectual property assets from Nortel,” and it’s forecasting that BlackBerry smartphone shipments in Q3 will grow between 27 percent and 37 percent compared to Q2. Sadly, the company only “shipped” 200,000 PlayBook tablets, with the prevailing thought being that it actually sold far fewer. Moreover, nary a forecast was given for future PlayBook sales.

As for thoughts from the head honcho(s)? Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, stated that “overall unit shipments in the quarter were slightly below our forecast due to lower than expected demand for older models,” further noting that his firm will “continue to build on the success of the BlackBerry 7 launch to drive the business as we focus our development efforts on delivering the next generation, QNX-based mobile platform next year.” Next year is a long, long way away, though, and there’s no doubt whatsoever what kind of competition will be in place by the time 2012 rolls around. We’ll be hopping on the analyst call here in a few, and you can look beyond the break for any notable mentions.

Continue reading RIM’s Q2 earnings report: $329 million in net income, not enough to fend off critics

RIM’s Q2 earnings report: $329 million in net income, not enough to fend off critics originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A new study has been released that shows the top 15 brands in Canada. The report was put together by Brand Finance who analyzed calculated the “strength” of a brand by organizing “detailed economic data, infrastructure data and perceptual market research data to rate and then value each nation brand”. At the top of the list was RBC, followed by TD Bank. As for the telecom sector, it was Bell (Canada’s 2nd largest carrier) who took home 6th spot overall, but claimed to be the strongest wireless brand. Rogers followed by placing 9th and TELUS came in at number 13.

For some reason – probably to gain media attention – Brand Finance decided this was a opportune time to single out and slam Waterloo-based RIM, who dropped 5 spots to the number 10 position. Kicking RIM while their down took up most of their press release and stated that “Blackberry’s dramatic decline comes as other handset providers are encroaching on the traditional B2B space, impacting handset sales. Blackberry has also failed to recently capture the hearts and minds of consumers globally in the way that Apple has managed to do.”

It’s great to see so much wireless being represent, a respectable 28% make up the top 15. Hopefully when RIM announces their Q2 results they will jump up in value, both in revenue and in the hearts/hands of Canadians.

Source: CNW

Related posts:

1. RIM, TELUS, Rogers, Bell and MTS all make the list of brands Canadians love/hate
2. RIM, MTS, SaskTel and TELUS make “Canada’s Top 100 Employers” list
3. Strategy Magazine recognizes TELUS in “Brands of the Year”

Continue reading MSDN previews Windows 8 touch on Windows 7 hardware

MSDN previews Windows 8 touch on Windows 7 hardware originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are a few pretty great backup apps for Android, but our favorite has to be Titanium Backup. It requires a rooted phone, but you can backup and restore apps from Dropbox, run automatic batch backups, and even uninstall crapware. More »

We got our paws on the two upcoming Archos Android 3.2 tablets the other week at IFA — and now it seems that you’ll be able to follow suit in the near future, with pre-sale beginning September 20th. The Archos eight-inch G9 starts at $299 for the 1GHz 8GB version, going all the way up to $369 for a 1.5GHz processor and a whopping 250GB of storage. The 10-incher has a 1.5GHz processor and 16GB of storage for $399 or you can plunk down $469 for the 250GB version. The 1GHz 80 G9 starts pre-sale on September 20th through Archos and goes on sale at select retailers on the 30th. Its 1.5GHz counterpart will be hitting in October. Press info is after the break.

Continue reading Archos G9 tablets doing the pre-sale thing September 20th

Archos G9 tablets doing the pre-sale thing September 20th originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a message to its shareholders on Thursday, DVD rental and video streaming company Netflix revealed that its subscriber acquisition has significantly slowed due to the revised subscription rates it announced two months ago.

Under the company’s new pricing structure, its unlimited video streaming feature, which was previously included freely in its DVD-by-mail subscription packages, would incur its own subscription cost for all subscribers. The effect this had on the price at the consumer’s end was shocking, and for some subscribers, it represented a 90% price increase in their subscription packages.

At the time, We posed the following question to Betanews readers:

“Netflix has separated DVD and streaming plans — raising prices 60 percent for many customers. How will you respond?”

Only 14.39% of responders said they would continue with their current plan and nearly 60% planned to close their account.

Now, Netflix says it expects to end the quarter with 2.2 million DVD-only subscribers instead of the 3 million it expected in July, and 9.8 million streaming only customers instead of the 10 million it had previously projected.

The net loss from their prior projection is a million subscribers.

It should be noted that this 36 million total still represents growth from last quarter, which Netflix ended with 24.59 million subscribers, it’s just that growth has been happening considerably slower than the company initially expected.

“We know our decision to split our services has upset many of our subscribers, which we don’t take lightly, but we believe this split will help us make our services better for subscribers and shareholders for years to come,” the company’s statement today said.

The company has not changed its financial guidance as a result of this projected loss in subscribers, and its international subscriber guidance is the same as it was in July, but the market didn’t take today’s announcement too kindly, and shares of Netflix opened 15% lower than yesterday.

1926

This shot from the movie The General is the most expensive shot in silent film history. It was filmed in a single take, that had to be perfect, with a real train and a ‘dummy’ engineer (notice the white arm hanging out the conductors window). Some of the locals who came to watch the filming, thought the dummy was a real person and screamed in horror; supposedly, one person even fainted.

(via Jaeger Amzallag)

If you want to cook corn for the masses, Bon Appetit suggests a dead simple, ingenious method: “cooler corn.” More »

Android/Windows/Mac: Cheetah Sync offers a free, wireless syncing solution if you want to make sure the music, photos, documents, and video on your Android phone or tablet are always backed up and in sync with a folder on your desktop. More »

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer was his usual frank self when he met financial analysts yesterday, admitting that the world isn’t yet as keen on Windows Phone as he’d hoped. To be precise, AllThingsD reported him as saying: “We haven’t sold quite as many as I would have liked in the first year.” His cunning plan? Well, that’s easy: make it all Nokia’s problem. Or, as he put it: “With Nokia we have a dedicated hardware partner that is all-in on Windows Phones.” Indeed, the Finnish manufacturer has now staked far more than Microsoft on the success of this “third ecosystem” and, if its imminent Mango handsets fail to turn things around, we may eventually see Stephen Elop standing behind that silent cash register.

Ballmer: Windows Phones aren’t selling very well, but we’re not worried originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 06:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is Word behaving sluggishly, slowing you down? There are a various reasons why Word may be slowing down, but you can easily change some settings to speed it up.

The How-To Geek Guide to Hackintoshing – Part 2: The Installation	Windows 8 Screenshot Tour: Everything You Possibly Want to Know	Hardware Upgrade: How To Install A New Hard Drive, Pt 1

Seems like we’ve heard this story before — Google buys a bunch of patents to protect its cute little green baby from all the big, bad patent lawsuits. Only this time, instead of buying a hardware manufacturer to expand its patent warchest, team Mountain View merely purchased 1,023 bits of IP from IBM. Covering everything from a method for filling holes in printed wiring boards to a method for file system management, Google seems to have grabbed quite the eclectic collection — one we’re sure Big G will put to work for itself and its buddies in no time. Those looking to see the full results of this latest patent shopping spree can hit the source link below.

Google loads up on IP again, buys 1,000 more patents from IBM originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Sep 2011 03:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cables are terrible, but we’re not quiiiite to the point where we can just snap our fingers and make everything wireless. The iTwin seems like a legitimately cool stopgap between the two. You plug its two halves into two computers, and it lets you access both machines’ files from either computer. More »

High-tech robotic suits, similar to the one portrayed in the 2008 Hollywood blockbuster Iron Man, could become a reality within 30 years, says a University of Victoria neuroscientist.

Until now, when you uploaded to YouTube, your video was hosted and shared, but couldn’t really be changed. If you wanted to trim off the end, swap out the soundtrack, or add an effect, you had to edit your video using a separate program and upload again.

Starting today, you can edit your uploaded videos right on YouTube and maintain the same video IDs. This means you keep your view count and comments, and all existing links to your video will continue to work. No re-uploading necessary!

Here’s how it works: just click Edit video on the video’s page or on your My Videos page:
You can stabilize your hand-held footage, rotate a video, and boost the contrast and colors. Try “I’m Feeling Lucky” for 1-click color correction:

Or if you’re looking for a more dramatic change, try one of our effects (developed in collaboration with our friends at Picnik):
Click Save to begin processing the edits to your video. And if you don’t like the new version, fear not: you can revert to the original and save again. You can also save your edits into a new video and try out multiple versions. Note that popular videos with over 1,000 views and videos with third-party content can only be saved as new videos once edited (learn more).

Here’s a quick video showing what you can do:

We’ll be rolling this out to all users globally over the course of the day. We know you want your videos to look their best, and we’re excited to see what you come up with using YouTube video editing!

John Gregg, Software Engineer, recently watched “Shenandoah.”