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Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Weaker prices dent S. Korea’s IT exports in Aug.
SEOUL, Sept. 7 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s exports of information technology (IT) products shrank from a year earlier for the second straight month in August largely on lower global prices, the government said Wednesday.
The country exported US$13.06 billion worth of IT products last month, down 2.4 percent from $13.39 billion in the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.
The country’s trade surplus in the IT sector dwindled from slightly over $7 billion last year to $5.97 billion as its IT imports surged 11.2 percent on-year to $7.1 billion.
In the first eight months of the year, South Korea shipped $99.75 billion worth of IT products, up 34.7 percent from the same period last year.
“Overall exports dropped in August due to a drop in prices of some products, including computer memory chips and display panels, but exports of mobile phones jumped 10.2 percent to $2.07 billion amid improving competitiveness of smartphones by local manufacturers,” the ministry said in a press release.
South Korea became the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of smartphones in the second quarter of the year with a 23.1 percent share of the global market, and also the world’s largest supplier of all mobile phones with a 24 percent global market share in terms of monetary value, it said.
The drop in IT exports was largely caused by lower-cost shipments of memory chips and display panels, whose combined shipments in terms of monetary value dropped 28.8 percent on-year to $4.26 billion.
Exports of all other IT products, excluding memory chips and display panels, surged 18.9 percent to $8.8 billion, according to the ministry.
The ministry earlier said the drop in exports of memory chips and display panels was largely due to a drop in their global prices. The average price of a dynamic random access memory chip (DRAM) fell to $0.80 in July from $2.60 a year earlier with the price of a display panel also falling 27.8 percent to $258 from $358.
The ministry had also noted the country’s IT sector will be hit hardest by the latest global financial turmoil sparked by a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.
The country’s IT exports to the United States dropped 20.4 percent from a year earlier to $1.17 billion in August with its shipments to the European Union also dropping 31.3 percent to $1.17 billion, according to the ministry.
The government, however, said the country’s IT exports will likely reach a new annual high this year as prices of DRAM and other IT products are expected to recover in the second half of the year.
“IT exports are expected to reach a record high of $160 billion this year as exports will likely pick up in the second half when demands are usually the highest,” the ministry said.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines Facebook executive takes heat in hearing on privacy
http://everythingfacebook.net/brightbridge-wealth-management-headlines-facebook-executive-takes-heat-in-hearing-on-privacy/
Reporting from Washington-
A top senator, angry that Facebook Inc. failed to quit millions of preteens from making use of its social networking internet site, accused co-founder Mark Zuckerberg of lacking “social values” and becoming far more concerned with creating the firm than with children’s privacy.
“It really is my common feeling that folks who are 20, 21, 22 years old actually don’t have any social values at this point,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) told one more top Facebook executive at a hearing Thursday.
“I feel he was focused on how the organization model would function,” Rockefeller stated about Zuckerberg, who was a 19-year-old Harvard student when he designed Facebook in 2004. “He wanted to make it bigger and faster and greater than anybody else ever had.”
The company’s policy calls for users to be at least 13, a move developed to steer clear of federal regulations for sites employed by young children. But a current Consumer Reports survey identified that about 7.5 million active Facebook users were younger than 13.
Rockefeller’s comments came as a Facebook executive for the initial time came below congressional quizzing in a current round of hearings about concerns that technologies businesses are not protecting individual privacy. Executives from Apple Inc. and Google Inc., which sent witnesses to a hearing last week, also appeared at Thursday’s hearing before a Commerce subcommittee.
Rockefeller, a crucial player on technology concerns, and other lawmakers are thinking about new regulations to defend on-line privacy, particularly for children. The problem has gained momentum with the current revelation that an obscure file on iPhones and iPads could shop thousands of detailed records of a user’s whereabouts.
Rockefeller mentioned he was lately told by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg that the firm has only 100 people monitoring the posts and other activities of about 600 million users.
“My reaction to that is that is just definitely indefensible,” Rockefeller told Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor, saying he was worried about kids getting targeted by sexual predators and on-line bullies. “I want you to defend your business here since I do not know how you can.”
Taylor stated Facebook shuts down the accounts of people found to be lying about their age to stay away from the company’s restriction.
“We do not allow people to misrepresent their age,” Taylor said.
But he admitted Facebook depended on other users to report such violations to enforce the policy.
The under-age dilemma at Facebook showed that massive technology organizations have not made privacy a top priority, stated Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, president of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit kids and family advocacy group.
Such hugely effective innovators should be in a position to generate approaches to better shield children’s privacy, Shenkan said. She then took a swipe at Facebook for hiring a high-powered public-relations firm to push news organizations to write unfavorable stories about privacy concerns at Google.
“Instead of spending funds to – employ PR firms to try and take down the other organization, let’s take that money and devote it on figuring out technological techniques that will shield our youngsters,” she told the subcommittee. “It cannot be 100 individuals sitting in a Facebook office trying to monitor 600 million conversations.”
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has introduced bipartisan legislation to avoid the misuse of sensitive consumer details, mentioned that privacy protection is not “the enemy of innovation.”
“Firms collecting people’s data, whether you’re a tech titan or not, ought to comply with a simple code of conduct,” Kerry said.
But Taylor warned that new privacy restrictions could squelch Facebook and other social networks.
Facebook tries to safeguard privacy by letting users choose which info they share, he mentioned. But Taylor cautioned that several men and women want to share their photographs and other particulars of their lives to get the most out of social networks, and Facebook doesn’t want to assume that all its users want to put a vault around their information.
“We realize that trust is a foundation of the social Web. Men and women will quit employing Facebook if they lose trust in our services,” he stated. “At the very same time, overly restrictive policies can interfere with the public’s demand for new and innovative methods to interact.”
But lawmakers stated numerous folks are clamoring for a lot more protection of their individual data, particularly now as much more mobile devices can give detailed information about a person’s whereabouts.
David Vladeck, director of the Federal Trade Commission-s Bureau of Consumer Protection, mentioned such place data deserved “specific protection,” although the agency has stopped brief of calling for legislation.
Google also has said it collects place data from mobile devices making use of its Android computer software. But Google and Apple executives stated they collected the data anonymously and shared it with third-party applications only if the user agreed.
“Does Apple track the location of my iPhone?” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked, holding up his device.
“We do not, sir,” stated Catherine A. Novelli, Apple’s vice president for worldwide government affairs.
The company never tracked a user’s actual location from the data collected on iPhones and iPads, only the place of nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hot spots, she stated.
Apple mentioned a computer software glitch caused the location information to be updated even when the user had selected not to use location-based services. The bug was fixed in the most recent computer software release, and the information will be encrypted in the subsequent update, Novelli stated.
Reporting from Washington-
A top senator, angry that Facebook Inc. failed to quit millions of preteens from making use of its social networking internet site, accused co-founder Mark Zuckerberg of lacking “social values” and becoming far more concerned with creating the firm than with children’s privacy.
“It really is my common feeling that folks who are 20, 21, 22 years old actually don’t have any social values at this point,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) told one more top Facebook executive at a hearing Thursday.
“I feel he was focused on how the organization model would function,” Rockefeller stated about Zuckerberg, who was a 19-year-old Harvard student when he designed Facebook in 2004. “He wanted to make it bigger and faster and greater than anybody else ever had.”
The company’s policy calls for users to be at least 13, a move developed to steer clear of federal regulations for sites employed by young children. But a current Consumer Reports survey identified that about 7.5 million active Facebook users were younger than 13.
Rockefeller’s comments came as a Facebook executive for the initial time came below congressional quizzing in a current round of hearings about concerns that technologies businesses are not protecting individual privacy. Executives from Apple Inc. and Google Inc., which sent witnesses to a hearing last week, also appeared at Thursday’s hearing before a Commerce subcommittee.
Rockefeller, a crucial player on technology concerns, and other lawmakers are thinking about new regulations to defend on-line privacy, particularly for children. The problem has gained momentum with the current revelation that an obscure file on iPhones and iPads could shop thousands of detailed records of a user’s whereabouts.
Rockefeller mentioned he was lately told by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg that the firm has only 100 people monitoring the posts and other activities of about 600 million users.
“My reaction to that is that is just definitely indefensible,” Rockefeller told Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor, saying he was worried about kids getting targeted by sexual predators and on-line bullies. “I want you to defend your business here since I do not know how you can.”
Taylor stated Facebook shuts down the accounts of people found to be lying about their age to stay away from the company’s restriction.
“We do not allow people to misrepresent their age,” Taylor said.
But he admitted Facebook depended on other users to report such violations to enforce the policy.
The under-age dilemma at Facebook showed that massive technology organizations have not made privacy a top priority, stated Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, president of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit kids and family advocacy group.
Such hugely effective innovators should be in a position to generate approaches to better shield children’s privacy, Shenkan said. She then took a swipe at Facebook for hiring a high-powered public-relations firm to push news organizations to write unfavorable stories about privacy concerns at Google.
“Instead of spending funds to – employ PR firms to try and take down the other organization, let’s take that money and devote it on figuring out technological techniques that will shield our youngsters,” she told the subcommittee. “It cannot be 100 individuals sitting in a Facebook office trying to monitor 600 million conversations.”
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has introduced bipartisan legislation to avoid the misuse of sensitive consumer details, mentioned that privacy protection is not “the enemy of innovation.”
“Firms collecting people’s data, whether you’re a tech titan or not, ought to comply with a simple code of conduct,” Kerry said.
But Taylor warned that new privacy restrictions could squelch Facebook and other social networks.
Facebook tries to safeguard privacy by letting users choose which info they share, he mentioned. But Taylor cautioned that several men and women want to share their photographs and other particulars of their lives to get the most out of social networks, and Facebook doesn’t want to assume that all its users want to put a vault around their information.
“We realize that trust is a foundation of the social Web. Men and women will quit employing Facebook if they lose trust in our services,” he stated. “At the very same time, overly restrictive policies can interfere with the public’s demand for new and innovative methods to interact.”
But lawmakers stated numerous folks are clamoring for a lot more protection of their individual data, particularly now as much more mobile devices can give detailed information about a person’s whereabouts.
David Vladeck, director of the Federal Trade Commission-s Bureau of Consumer Protection, mentioned such place data deserved “specific protection,” although the agency has stopped brief of calling for legislation.
Google also has said it collects place data from mobile devices making use of its Android computer software. But Google and Apple executives stated they collected the data anonymously and shared it with third-party applications only if the user agreed.
“Does Apple track the location of my iPhone?” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked, holding up his device.
“We do not, sir,” stated Catherine A. Novelli, Apple’s vice president for worldwide government affairs.
The company never tracked a user’s actual location from the data collected on iPhones and iPads, only the place of nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hot spots, she stated.
Apple mentioned a computer software glitch caused the location information to be updated even when the user had selected not to use location-based services. The bug was fixed in the most recent computer software release, and the information will be encrypted in the subsequent update, Novelli stated.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Google cuts deal for Dealmap
http://brightbridgewealthmanagement-facts.com/
Can I get a discount for some Groupon envy treatment?
Google has acquired Dealmap, a California-based startup that will fuel Mountain View’s efforts to mimic Groupon.
Launched in May 2010, Dealmap aggregates “daily deals” from hundreds of sources, and according to the company, its various services are now used by over 2 million people.
“We are impressed with what The Dealmap team has accomplished and excited to welcome them to Google,” Google said in a statement shared with various news outlets. “We’ve been thrilled with the early success of our commerce offerings, and we think they can help us build even better products and services for consumers and merchants.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Google recently rolled out its own daily deals service, Google Offers, after apparently failing in a bid to purchase Groupon, the poster child of the online daily deals services. Google Offers was first launched in Portland, and it has since expanded to New York and San Francisco. Presumably, Dealmap will be rolled into the Offers effort.
“We believe Google provides the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission,” Dealmap said in a blog post. “We’re passionate about helping people save money while having great local experiences, and in Google we’ve found the perfect partner that shares this passion, as well as our vision and strategy. We believe that joining Google will help us innovate in new and unexplored areas of commerce.”
Dealmap said that “for time being”, it will continue to support its primary services, including its main website, mobile apps, daily email service, and API. The company has about 15 employees, and the entire staff will be moved from Menlo Park, California to Google HQ in Mountain View. ®
Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Apple unveils iCloud pricing, launches developer preview
http://brightbridgewealthmanagement-mag.com/
Apple’s new iCloud service will allow iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users running iOS 5 and up to store their music, contacts, documents, and other data online. The service will also store a history of apps you download from the App Store and media you purchase from iTunes, allowing you to re-download items at any time.
Today Apple opened up iCloud to developers. If you have a developer account you can login atiCloud.com to kick the tires. In addition to online storage, the service provides a free “find my phone” feature which shows your phone’s physical location on a map, and a suite of web apps for email, calendar, and iWork, allowing you to view documents from your iOS device.
9 to 5 Mac has posted a series of images. Overall, the web apps look an awful lot like iPad apps, which is probably a good thing if you’re used to using iWork, Mail, and other apps on an iPad. On the other hand, if you’re not using a touch-enabled computer, the iPad look and feel might be a bit of overkill.
Users will get 5GB of storage for free, and anything purchased from iTunes doesn’t count against that limit. But if you need more space, Apple announced today that you can get an extra 10GB of data for $20 per year, 20GB extra for $40 per year, or 50GB extra for $100 per year.
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