Friday, January 27, 2012

Android sneaks up on Apple in tablet market

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/01/26/apple_loses_ground_to_android_in_world_tablet_market/


Google's Android increased its share of the tablet market from 29% to 39% in the fourth quarter compared with the year-earlier period as Apple's iPad declined from 68% to 58%, according to a Strategy Analytics report. The research firm also found that Microsoft achieved a 1.5% share, up from zero in 2010. Overall, tablet shipments reached 27 million units during the fourth quarter, a 150% increase from the year before

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Shortpaw Acronyms Translated

From Sally to Doreen With Love, these are really cute.





Some Favorite Shortpaws (Acronyms) 


BOL: Bark Out Loud


BBO: Big Bark Out


BAYL: Bark At You Later


BMTO: Barking My Tail Off


BMJTO: Barking My Jolly Tail Off (this is for the Christmas Season)


BMNYTO: Barking My New Year’s Tail Off!


BMBTO: Barking My Bilingual Tail Off!


BMKTO: Barking My Kingly Tail Off


BMFTO: Barking My Flat Tail Off


BIMMO: Barking In MY Mind Only


BUMB: Barking Under My Breath


BBB: Bummed Beyond Belief


BLAM: Bark Like A Maniac


HBB: Happy Beyond Belief


BDFF: Best Dog Friend Forever


BLWM: Bark Less Wag More


LWW: Lick – Woof – Wag


JFI: Just Fetch It


GSY: Go Scratch Yourself


GW: Guilt Works


HATM: Howling At The Moon


TOPA: The Original Party Animal


FDMM: Flat Dante Mini Me


MHLC: Missing HER Like Crazy


MMDRNF: My Momma Didn’t Raise No Fool


TTB: The Traveling Boy


SUAB: Sit Up And Beg


SBB: Spoiled Beyond Belief


PBB: Proud Beyond Belief


SBALC: Sit Back And Look Cute


ROAPD: Roll Over And Play Dead


OLAL: Out Like A Light


ITDO: In This Dog’s Opinion


IGTBM: It’s Great To Be Me


IAAM: It’s All About Me


ICHW: I Can Hardly Wait


HLCOLGG: How Lucky Can One Little Guy Get


BSMLGH: Be Still My Little Guy Heart


IGBWALHFH: I Get By With A Little Help From HER


HWTMF: Having Way Too Much Fun






TP: Think Pawsitive


TPU: Two Paws Up


TILAM: Take It Like A Man


TILALG: Takin’ It Like A Little Guy


TCOB: Takin’ Care Of Business


TGTBT: Too Good To Be True


TSCLG: Tech Savvy Cute Little Guy


PCQ: Personal Cuteness Quotient


MYLC: Missing You Like Crazy


PFA: Paws For Applause


TTTP: Talk To The Paw


TCDI: The Cat Did It


TCFW: Too Cute For Words


WTCFW: Way Too Cute For Words (this one from MTM)


TCFWWOAD: Too Cute For Words WithOut A Doubt (Thanks to MTM for this one!)


TCLGITH: The Cutest Little Guy In The Hood (another one from MTM…ye haa)


PTP: Pounding the Pavement or Pushing the Pedals


HITR: Human In The Room


CITA: Caught In The Act


CSB: Can’t Stop Barking


CPOP: Completely Pooped Out Pup


GUMB: Growling Under My Breath


GUMJB: Growling Under My Jolly Breath


GUMVB: Growling Under My Virtual Breath


NBFALG: Not Bad For A Little Guy


SAYN: Smiling At You Now






RMT: Read My Tail


TNTB: Trying Not To Bark


WMLO: Working My Legs Off


WWW: Who’s Walking Who


CLG: Cute Little Guy (that’s me!!!)


LGL: Little Guy Lovin’


LH: Love HER (I really, really do)


DE: Dante Effect


4-L: Four-Legged


TFFFC: Too Fit For Fat Clothes (this one’s for HER)

Monday, January 23, 2012

On eBay, It Pays to Snipe - Game Theory - Free Sniping App

BayGenie eBay Auction Sniper Free
Download Now CNET Installer Enabled


Date added:
November 18, 2011
Price: Free
Operating system:
Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/Server 2008/7


Product ranking:
#1 in Auction Software


CNET Editors' review May 08, 2009


For users who are frustrated by being outbid in the last seconds of an eBay auction, BayGenie makes you that last-second bidder. This unique software lets you automatically bid on a product as the clock winds down, no matter where you are.


This freeware program has a very basic interface that shouldn't take long for any user to understand. The bulk of the screen is dominated by a two column check list detailing a user's options with the free version of the software and with the paid version. However, the bottom right corner of the program will be what interests most users. Here you can set up your future eBay victories by entering your eBay ID, password, the item number you wish to bid on, your maximum bid, and how many seconds before the close of the auction you would like your bid to be placed. From here, a screen outlines your choices and asks you to be positive this is your choice.


This program is simple to use, but its major complaints come from its limitations without purchasing the Pro version of BayGenie. The biggest drawback is that users can only bid on one item at a time with the free version. However, if you don't bid on multiple items at once, this is a great download.


Publisher's Description




Read more: BayGenie eBay Auction Sniper Free - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com 

http://download.cnet.com/BayGenie-eBay-Auction-Sniper-Free/3000-6905_4-10569541.html#ixzz1kKasYO1O




http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2006-06-25-ebay-physics_x.htm

On eBay, it pays to snipe
Posted 6/25/2006 6:21 PM ETE-mail | Print |

 RELATED PAPERS
Roth, Alvin E. and Axel Ockenfels, "Last-Minute Bidding and the Rules for Ending Second-Price Auctions: Evidence from eBay and Amazon Auctions on the Internet," American Economic Review, 92 (4), September 2002, 1093-1103.
Ariely, Dan, Axel Ockenfels, and Alvin E. Roth,"An Experimental Analysis of Ending Rules in Internet Auctions," Rand Journal of Economics, 36, 4, Winter 2005, 891-908.
Axel Ockenfels and Alvin E. Roth, "The Timing of Bids in Internet Auctions: Market Design, Bidder Behavior, and Artificial Agents," AI Magazine, Fall 2002, 79-88.
Thank goodness for science. How else would we know the best way to nab those barely-used weed whackers, dumbbells or duck-shape salt shakers on eBay? In a study that gives the lie to the notion that eggheads don't like to eyeball online auctions like normal folks, a study by South Korean physicists confirms via some elaborate mathematical modeling that "sniping" — waiting for the very last second to submit your bid on that Elvis-shape throw rug — is indeed "a rational and effective strategy to win in an eBay auction."
Founded in 1995, eBay is the king of online auction sites. Sellers put up items for sale and buyers bid up the price. Thanks to the Internet's lack of state sales tax and the public's thirst for other people's garage sale items, the company has grown into a firm that amassed $4.55 billion in revenue last year. The service sets a deadline on bids for items, which has given rise to the practice of "sniping," bidding at the last minute to deny other bidders time to outbid you.
Savvy buyers have taken to the practice in swarms. Some companies even exist to snipe for you. Sellers, however, have grumbled that the practice keeps winning bid prices lower than they would be in a more open-ended auction, in which prices may be driven up by competition between buyers. If nobody bids until the last second, it's inevitably just a (relatively) low-bidding person who puts in the highest-price bid and walks away with the item.
To test whether sniping is a smart way to do things or just truncates normal bidding, the South Korean team at Seoul National University produced a "master equation" for how bidding proceeds (it's nk(t+1) — nk(t) = w(k-1)(t)*n(k-1)(t) — wk(t)*nk(t) + sigma(k,1)*u(t), if you really want to know), and then tested it against a massive number of auction records, some 264,073 items sold in one day on eBay and another 287,018 items sold in one year by eBay's Korean partner.
Plugging all those data into the model and testing the outcome in terms of how the auctions turned out, the team found that the probability of submitting a winning bid on an item indeed drops with each bid. "Our analysis explicitly shows that the winning strategy is to bid at the last moment as the first attempt rather than incremental bidding from the start." The study appears in the current Physical Review E journal.
The finding is no surprise to Harvard economist Alvin Roth, who has studied sniping from an economics viewpoint since 2002 with colleague Axel Ockenfels of Germany's University of Cologne. They came to similar conclusions. "I think you might do the most good if you advise bidders to form an opinion of how much they are willing to pay for an item, so that they don't get caught up in a bidding war and pay more than they will be happy with," says Roth, by e-mail. "But, that being said, if they know what proxy bid they want to submit, it won't hurt them to submit it very near the end (but neither will it help them much, or often ...) So, sniping is a good strategy, for those with the time to do it," he adds.
A statement on the eBay site says: Sniping is part of the eBay experience, and all bids placed before a listing ends are valid — even if they're placed one second before the listing ends.
BONUS MATERIAL: Dan Vergano's Q&A with Alvin Roth and Axel Ockenfels
1. Do you view sniping as a problem? Some eBay sellers have complained that sniping works to artificially lower auction prices. What is your view?
Ockenfels: Sniping can help bidders to get better prices on eBay. But sellers too can profit from sniping, because the possibility of sniping may attract more bidders. For instance, sniping can lead to more bidding from experts, because by bidding late, experts can avoid giving information to others through their own early bids. Sniping can also increase the excitement and entertainment value of bidding, which again attracts more bidders.
Roth: Sniping is a feature of the auction that eBay bought into when it chose to have a hard close. They must think it adds enough to the auction, in entertainment value, in allowing experts to protect their information, etc. to make up in increased bidders what it loses in lost bids and bidding wars.
2. If your work and this South Korean paper show that sniping is rational and effective, why doesn't everyone use the strategy?
Ockenfels: On eBay, not the last bid but the highest bid wins. Furthermore, last-minute bids sometimes come in too late, after the close of the auction. So, it can be a perfectly sensible strategy to submit a bid early. In fact, depending on the situation, game theory supports both early and late bidding strategies. However, we are also seeing a lot of non-rational, naive behaviors on markets such as eBay. There is no reason to suppose that everybody always behaves in a rational and effective way. This is especially true for eBay, where many experienced and sophisticated traders interact with many unexperienced, naive bidders.
Roth: EBay isn't an English auction, it is a second price auction with proxy bids. If you're a busy guy, you might find it better to put in an early proxy bid, high enough to have a chance of winning. The winning bidder isn't the last bidder, it's the bidder with the highest proxy bid (and the earlier bidder in case of ties). So sniped bids only get lower prices when other bidders would have been willing to raise their proxy bids, but don't have the chance. That happens often enough so that sniping is a good strategy for those with the time ....
3. How does this new study's approach strike you compared to the one you published in 2002? My understanding was that it rested on game theory, so I'm just trying to see how you see things.
Ockenfels: We closely intertwine game theoretical, laboratory and field analyses. Taken together, our studies help in understanding how the market microstructure qualitatively influence participants' strategies and overall market performance. The new study looks at bidding phenomena from a very different perspective and thus takes a very different approach. It quantitatively analyzes statistical properties of dynamic bidding patterns on eBay — without addressing institutional complexities or equilibrium aspects of behavior.
Roth: We take a lot of approaches, empirical, theoretical, experimental. And so we are able to look into the multiple causes of sniping, and how they are influenced by the auction rules (and why, therefore, there's so much less late bidding on other kinds of auctions, for example.) But the big divide between physics and economics is that physicists tend to study processes that don't have any human volition in them. Molecules do what they do without forming opinions about what other molecules do. Sometimes this physics approach can also yield some insights into large markets, where each player is small enough to be inconsequential. And eBay must have looked that way to the authors of this article, since they report that in one day they have data from 264,073 auctions involving 384,058 distinct bidders. On the other hand, when I look at those numbers, what strikes me is that there were fewer than 2 bidders per auction in their data. To put it another way, a lot of auctions in their dataset had only a single bidder. Obviously conclusions about sniping are going to be different in such auctions (and in our analyses we normally exclude them).
4. Do you see a better auction strategy for online auction?
Ockenfels: What is a good bidding or selling strategy in online auctions depends on the context, such as the degree of competition and the available information about the value of the object. However, there is a fast-growing applied literature in economics on auction/market design and bidding strategies. (See Roth:http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/papers/engineer.pdf.)
Roth: I think you might do the most good if you advise bidders to form an opinion of how much they are willing to pay for an item, so that they don't get caught up in a bidding war and pay more than they will be happy with. But, that being said, if they know what proxy bid they want to submit, it won't hurt them to submit it very near the end (but neither will it help them much, or often…) So, sniping is a good strategy, for those with the time to do it. (You can also pay a fee to third party sniping software on the web, like esnipe.com or others ....)
5. What do you see as the key point(s) to make to readers about a study like this one? How do the results apply to other auctions?
One of the general lessons that comes out of our research in "economic engineering" is: details matter! For instance, our studies demonstrate that replacing eBay's hard close by a soft close, which allows bidders to always respond to late bids, would remove the strategic incentives to snipe and thus substantially affect bidding behavior. Bidders respond to incentives, and incentives can be strongly affected by the details of the auction rules and algorithms. This is true for all auctions, including, for instance, spectrum, electricity and procurement auctions.
Each week, USA TODAY's Dan Vergano combs scholarly journals to present the Science Snapshot, a brief summary of some of the latest findings in scientific research. For past articles, visit this index page.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

I love my country, that's why I feel it's important to post this




http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yuC_4mGTs98




Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 conspiracy theory in under 5 minutes.
(Watch FrenchGermanSpanishItalian or Portuguese translations of this video.)
TRANSCRIPT: On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcoholsnort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst officewhere DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidenceliterally fell into the FBI’s lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.
The investigation was delayedunderfundedset up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. It was based on testimonyextracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7Able DangerPtechSibel EdmondsOBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening. It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney…well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secretoff the recordnot under oath and behind closed doors. It didn’t bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of “little practical significance“. Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims’ family members’ questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were “a failure of imagination” because “I don’t think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings ” except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.
The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that’s OK because it probably wasn’t important.
The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that’s OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.
NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7′s collapse, but that’s OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would “jeopardize public safety“.
The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that’s OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.
This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise himhimhim, and her. (and her and her and him).
Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away. Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away. Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn’t recorded on video, in which he didn’t resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet. Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team’s members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilitiesand the rescue of Jessica Lynch.
If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBICIANSADIASECMSMWhite HouseNIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Retro Tech

Apparently audio cassettes are so retro, they're hip.
Wearing my audio cassette t-shirt, 20 y.o.'s are telling me they love the analog  crunchy sound
I have a huge library ready to remaster...
...will definitely keep the crunchy sound.


http://www.harmankardon.com/EN-US/aboutus/ScienceofSound/Pages/SoundthroughTime.aspx


http://www.roger-russell.com/magrevaudio.htm#a1969

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Men's Journal 101 - Let's face it, We're afraid of Rejection

http://blogs.marinij.com/katwilder/2009/10/shy.html

Buddy Hackett

Just in case you forgot how funny Buddy Hackett is.



http://redux.com/stream/item/2134771/Buddy-Hackett-Wax-Job-1988?ref=c2VhcmNo

Thursday, January 5, 2012

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513604577142481239801336.html?mod=djemTECH_t





Barnes & Noble Inc. is the latest old-school company to discover how costly it can be to try to reinvent itself for a digital future.
The nation's largest bookstore chain warned Thursday it would lose twice as much money this fiscal year as it previously expected, and said it is weighing splitting off its growing Nook digital-book business from its aging bookstores.


Over the past 15 years, rapid technological change has transformed the company from a dominant retailing force that left smaller booksellers quaking in fear to a struggling giant grasping for a plan to ensure its long-term relevance to the publishing industry.
Barnes & Noble realized early on that e-books could appeal to consumers, but allowed Amazon.com Inc. to get an early leg up. Now it is locked in a battle with Amazon and another deep-pocketed rival, Apple Inc., to sell both electronic books and the high-tech devices consumers use to read them.


Digital technology continues to roil all manner of once-dominant companies. Former giants such as Blockbuster Inc., Circuit City and Barnes & Noble's main book-chain rival, Borders Group Inc., have struggled mightily—and in some cases, disappeared altogether—in the face of digital competitors including Netflix Inc. and Amazon. Wednesday's news that Eastman Kodak Co. was contemplating seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection underscored the severity of the technology threat.
Barnes & Noble's stock fell 17% on Thursday. The company now may be at its most critical juncture since Leonard Riggio, its chairman and largest shareholder, opened his first store in New York's Greenwich Village in 1965.


As recently as the 1990s, Barnes & Noble was known as a carnivorous competitor with the power to wipe out independent bookstores with its steeply discounted books and sprawling stores where customers could sip coffee and read in plush chairs. In New York City, the emergence of a Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side was partly responsible for the mid-1990s closing of the beloved neighborhood bookseller Shakespeare & Company—the kind of narrative arc that cropped up in the movie "You've Got Mail."
Ironically, Barnes & Noble had been one of the first to recognize the potential of digital books. In 1998, it invested in NuvoMedia Inc., maker of the Rocket eBook reader, and the bookseller actively supported digital-book sales. But in 2003, it exited the still-nascent business, saying there wasn't any profit in it.


It wasn't until 2009 that Barnes & Noble re-entered the business, introducing its Nook e-reader. By then, Amazon had been selling its Kindle device for about two years, and was offering best sellers for $9.99, a fraction of what hardcover best sellers are priced at.
Apple introduced its iPad tablet in January 2010. Amazon responded with its competing Kindle Fire tablet this past September, and in November, Barnes & Noble introduced its Nook Tablet.


E-book sales have skyrocketed, jumping to $863 million in 2010, from $62 million in 2008, according to BookStats, a joint-research venture between the Book Industry Study Group and the Association of American Publishers. One publisher predicted Thursday that e-books could account for as much as 40% of total revenue by the end of the year.
Although Barnes & Noble was late to the game, its devices have won critical praise, and publishers estimate today that it controls as much as 27% of the digital-books market. "We saw more growth with e-books with Barnes & Noble this Christmas than anybody else," said the publisher.


But those sales have come at an enormous cost. Developing, manufacturing and promoting e-readers and tablets requires heavy upfront spending. Barnes & Noble's spending on advertising has more than tripled since 2009, according to Kantar Media, an ad-tracking unit of WPP PLC. To promote the Nook, the retailer returned to national TV advertising in 2010, after a 14-year hiatus, buying spots on popular programs such as "American Idol."
The heavy Nook investment has squeezed Barnes & Noble's bottom line. Largely as a result, its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization—a critical measure of earnings—fell to $163 million in the fiscal year ending April 30, 2011, from $281 million in fiscal 2010.


When Barnes & Noble's stock weakened, the company came under pressure from activist investor Ronald Burkle. In response, Mr. Riggio, who maintains control with a stake of about 30%, put the company up for sale in August 2010. Last May, Liberty Media Corp. made a bid to buy the business. Mr. Riggio appeared to support the bid, but Liberty Media eventually opted to invest $204 million for a 16.6% stake, receiving two board seats.
This holiday season has offered a ray of hope. Barnes & Noble said device sales had risen 70% for the nine-week period ending Dec. 31, compared with the year-ago period. It said the Nook business is likely to notch $1.5 billion in sales in the current fiscal year, compared with $880 million a year earlier. That business includes the Nook devices, digital-book sales, accessories, magazine and newspaper sales, app sales and sales of warranties.
On Thursday, Barnes & Noble increased its projected loss per share for the current fiscal year to between $1.10 and $1.40, from the 30 cents to 70 cents it reaffirmed one month ago.


Barnes & Noble blamed an unexpected shortfall of sales of the Nook Simple Touch e-reader on a Christmas where consumers embraced color digital devices, including the Nook Tablet and Amazon's Kindle Fire. The e-reader sales shortfall is significant because of its ripple effect on projected sales of related products, including e-books and accessories.
"We over-anticipated the demand for the holiday season," said William Lynch, the company's chief executive officer.
Mr. Lynch said Barnes & Noble has plenty of capital to continue financing the Nook expansion, including a $1 billion credit line.


But in a comment at an investor conference on Wednesday, Liberty Media Chief Executive Greg Maffei hinted that Barnes & Noble might need help to continue building the business. Competing with Apple and Amazon, he said, was a "big-boy game." He said Barnes & Noble may find "partners to help fund that game, meaning the public or strategic partners."
Barnes & Noble said in a statement on Thursday it was "in discussions with strategic partners including publishers, retailers and technology companies in international markets." It said that could lead to expanding the Nook business overseas.


One possibility is that Barnes & Noble could sell a minority stake in the Nook business in a public offering. The two businesses would likely have different managements and different boards. Under such a scenario, Barnes & Noble would continue to have close ties to its Nook devices. Another possibility is selling the Nook business outright.


Edward Latessa, a portfolio manager for Aria Partner, a Boston-based investment firm that owns a stake in Barnes & Noble, suggested one logical buyer could be Google Inc., whose e-book store has had only a minimal impact so far. "The Nook business alone could be worth $1.5 billion," said Mr. Latessa. The Nook runs on Google's Android software. Google declined to comment.
Another potential partner is Microsoft Corp., people familiar with the situation said. Microsoft declined to comment.


The idea for splitting off the Nook business may partly reflect the influence of Liberty Media, whose chairman, John Malone, and chief executive, Mr. Maffei, are experienced at devising complex financial structures to highlight the value of businesses. Mr. Maffei and another Liberty executive, Mark Carleton, are on Barnes & Noble's board.


"This is classic Malone," noted Maxim Group analyst John Tinker.
The idea came up during the company's long-running strategic-review process, which began in the summer of 2010, according to people familiar with the situation. Barnes & Noble executives and the board discussed how the company could increase shareholder value and improve its stock price, these people said, and separating the Nook business was one suggestion.


The idea was also embraced by Liberty, said another person familiar with the situation.
Barnes & Noble said the decision to explore the potential sale of the Nook business was a board-level decision that had the full support of the company.
Investors have shown they are in favor of companies overhauling their structures to focus their business divisions, applauding moves by McGraw-Hill Cos., Kraft Foods and other companies that separated businesses last year.
Barnes & Noble investors may not have the patience to fund Nook growth here and abroad, said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. "It's going to require sustained investment."
—Gina Chon and Suzanne Vranica contributed 
to this article.

Android Tablets - Fierce Competition In 2011?

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/hiner/why-android-tablets-failed-a-postmortem/10011?tag=nl.e101

Why Android tablets failed: A postmortem

January 5, 2012, 10:56 AM PST
Takeaway: Android tablets were expected to give the Apple iPad fierce competition in 2011. It never happened. Here’s why Android tablets flopped.

As I gear up for CES 2012 next week, I can’t help but think back to CES 2011 where the big story was all about Android tablets. I was in the front row at the Verizon keynote when Google made a surprise appearance and did a demo of its newly-unveiled tablet software, Android 3.0 “Honeycomb.” I shot a quick video of that demo, sprinted back to my hotel room, uploaded it to the web, and it quickly went viral.
The tech world was all abuzz about Android tablets. People were yapping about the gorgeous eye candy in Google’s Honeycomb demo. Motorola, ASUS, and lots of other gadget companies quickly made big, flashy CES announcements about their forthcoming Android tablets. The Apple iPad had just surprised nearly everyone by selling 15 million tablets in 2010, but the general consensus at the time was that Android was firing off a clear message: “Dear Apple: We’re coming after the iPad.”
On smartphones, Android had just had a huge 2010 of its own. It went from virtually zero market share in January to a third of U.S. smartphone sales by the end of the year, leapfrogging the iPhone in the process. With so many of tech’s biggest hardware makers lining up behind Android tablets heading into 2011, the expectation was that Android tablets would likely leapfrog the iPad by the end of the year. At the very worst, it looked like Android tablets would pull even with the iPad and split the tablet market. Even as late as June 2011, some prominent tech commentators were still predicting that Android tablets would gobble up a huge chunk of the tablet market by the end of 2011.
It never happened.
Depending on who you believe and what exactly you count (tablets sold to retailers vs. tablets sold to customers, and whether you count Android offshoots like the Amazon Kindle Fire), Android was running on somewhere between 15% to 30% of all tablets sold in 2011. That’s respectable, right? Disappointing, but respectable. However, that’s not the whole story. It gets worse.
If we look at actually tablet usage, the numbers get really ugly for Android. Recent reports (like this one from ComScore) that track web traffic from tablets show that the iPad accounts for 95% of tablet traffic in the U.S. and 88% globally. That means that either Android tablet sales to paying customers are much lower than previously reported or the people who buy Android tablets aren’t using them very much, or a combination of the two. Whatever the details are, it’s an ugly scenario that means Android tablets have almost no traction in the market.
So, why did Android tablets flop in 2011? There are four main reasons. Let’s count them down, and then talk about what 2012 looks like.

4. The 16×9 problem

Google tried to get innovative with the form factor of Android tablets by giving them a 16×9 aspect ratio instead of copying the iPad’s 4×3 form factor. It sounded good. It was different. After all, 16×9 is associated with HD and 4×3 is associated with SD. The problem is that when you put a 16×9 tablet in your hands, it feels awkward. Google made landscape the default orientation so it feels like you’re holding a laptop screen that’s missing a keyboard, instead of holding a book or a magazine or a padfolio like it feels when you have a 10-inch 4×3 device like the iPad. When you turn a 16×9 tablet to portrait mode, the screen feels oddly squished. And now, it’s going to be difficult for Google to fix the problem. The 16×9 landscape orientation is still the default in Android 4.0 and there are a ton of existing Android tablets like the Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer that are locked into the 16×9 orientation, so even if Google did a software update, it wouldn’t help.

3. The enterprise doesn’t trust Android

One of the ways that Android tablets were going to move a lot of units in 2011 was large orders of 1,000s of tablets to traditional enterprises like hospitals, manufacturers, and schools. Last March Iwrote about Samsung gearing up to sell a lot of Android tablets to the enterprise by setting up sales programs and preparing its sales force to handle big tablet orders. Samsung reps enthusiastically said they would contact me when they had big customers willing to talk about their tablet rollouts. I never heard from them. By mid-2011 that didn’t surprise me because the IT leaders I spoke with were spooked about Android malware. The fact that users could click on browser links and accidentally sideload apps that could siphon data out of Android devices was not something IT pros wanted to deal with. As a result, surveys like the one from enterprise vendor Good Technology showed that 96% of tablet activations in the enterprise were iPads.

2. The lack of tablet apps

Despite the 16×9 problem (and Honeycomb’s initial software glitches that Google eventually ironed out), the Android tablet platform itself isn’t all bad. I like running widgets and mini-apps side-by-side, for example. That makes Android tablets feel more like a traditional multi-tasking computer. The built-in Gmail, Google Books, and web browser apps in Honeycomb are really slick — I especially like the thumb controls in the browser. The problem is that there just isn’t enough of this stuff. Google has not created enough of its own apps and third party software developers have hit the snooze button on Android tablet apps. Where’s the Google Analytics app or its Google+ app or its Google Finance app or its Picnik photo editing app? Instead of building its own native Android tablet apps and firing up software makers, Google seems intent on focusing app developers on building HTML5 apps that work well across tablets, smartphones, and computers. That’s an important and admirable goal, but dedicated apps can still be extremely useful for taking advantage of a platform’s strengths. And the bottom line is that users like the simplicity and focus of having an app that they can tap and enter a dedicated environment for a particular service. Google doesn’t get that, doesn’t like it, and hasn’t pushed for it on Android tablets. The result is that Android tablets just don’t feel like they’re useful for doing much besides surfing the web.

1. The price

When Apple first announced the iPad, I had honestly started tuning out by end of the event (there’s only so much of that “magical” and “revolutionary” nonsense you can stomach). I was ready to write an article excoriating the iPad as a badly-overpriced toddler toy when Steve Jobs announced that the price of the iPad would start at $499 (I’d expected the price tag to be $800-$1000). I immediately bolted straight up in my seat and my eyes popped open and Apple had my attention again. To this day, I believe that the iPad’s greatest marketing strategy and the No. 1 factor in its success has been its price tag. Conversely, when Google and Motorola announced that the first big Android tablet — the Motorola Xoom — would cost $800, my immediate reaction was to shake my head and say, “DOA.” At the time, other tech analysts tried to argue that what you got for the price with the Xoom compared very favorably to the highest-priced iPad. It was a logical argument but that’s not how most of today’s tech buyers think, and the proof is that virtually no one bought the Xoom. Eventually, other tablet makers rolled out some nice Android tablets for $400-$500 by the middle of 2011 — again, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and ASUS Eee Pad Transformer are both very attractive — but to the masses, that price tag was apparently still too much for tablets whose primary function is surfing the web.

What now?

Even Google’s own numbers don’t paint a pretty picture for Android tablets, and the release of Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” is unlikely to help the situation much in 2012. ICS is’t about fixing the tablet problem. It’s about unifying the Android experience between smartphones and tablets. My ZDNet colleague Jason Perlow has been testing Ice Cream Sandwich on the Motorola Xoom and has concluded that it won’t fix any of these fundamental flaws with Android tablets.
Last month Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said that Google will “market a tablet of the highest quality” in the first half of 2012. It’s also been rumored recently that Google is working on a low-cost 7-inch tablet to battle the Amazon Kindle Fire, which runs a bastardized version of Android 2.3 and quickly grabbed the No. 2 spot in the tablet market at the end of 2011.
However, until Google deals with the four issues we’ve talked about here, it’s unlikely that it will change the fate of Android tablets. At the very least, Google will have to fix No. 1 and No. 2, and that might be enough to overcome No. 3 and No. 4.

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