Published: August 18, 2010

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Stuart Goldenberg

Pogue’s Posts

The latest in technology from the Times’s David Pogue, with a new look.

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Among its features, OpenDNS allows the user to create shortcuts to favorite sites.

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It also allows a user to choose categories of sites that can be blocked.

But first, a warning: On the way to understanding how your life will get better, you’ll have to read about some technical, fairly arcane topics. Trust me: it’ll be worth it.

In this case, the topic is your Web browsing, and the magic wand is a free service called OpenDNS.

You know how every Web site has an address, like www.google.com or www.nytimes.com? Turns out that’s just a fakeout. It’s a convenient crutch for you, the human with limited brain capacity.

Behind the scenes, the actual address is a string of numbers (called an I.P. address, for Internet protocol) that looks something like this: 74.125.53.100. (That happens to be Google’s address.)

Nobody can remember those addresses, though they are no longer than a phone number, so the Web’s thoughtful designers came up with a secondary system: plain-English addresses like www.whatever.com. When you type that into your browser, a computer at your Internet provider performs a quick lookup. “Aha,” it says to itself in its little digital way, “you just typed www.google.com. What you really want, of course, is 74.125.53.100. Please hold; I’ll connect you.”

That, in a nutshell, is how D.N.S. works. (It stands for domain name system, in case that helps.)

Unfortunately, from time to time, your Internet provider’s D.N.S. computer goes down. To you, it seems that the Web itself has gone out, because you can’t pull up any sites at all. In December 2008, for example, 1.2 million Los Angeles citizens thought that the entire Web had gone offline, because of a crashed Time Warner D.N.S. computer.

That story was gleefully provided by OpenDNS, the one-of-a-kind company with a killer idea: to provide a free, alternative D.N.S. service that works better than your Internet provider’s. Faster, more reliably and with more features. You don’t pay anything, sign up for anything or install anything. All you have to do is make one change to your network settings, and you get all of these benefits:

NO D.N.S. CRASHES The company claims that in its five-year history, its D.N.S. computers have had zero downtime. In fact, had you been using OpenDNS in 2008, the Time Warner crash would not have affected you at all. You’d have kept right on surfing while your next-door neighbors were gnashing their teeth and playing board games.

A similar feature called SmartCache lets you pull up individual Web sites even when, because of broken addresses, they are unavailable to everyone else.

FASTER PAGES To speed up the conversion of plain-English addresses to numeric ones, every Internet provider caches, or preloads, the addresses of thousands of the most popular Web sites. This trick can save you microseconds or fractions of seconds with every page you open. When you visit a site that’s not on that “most popular” list, though, you may wait a bit.

But OpenDNS caches the entire Web. Every Web site appears slightly faster. If you don’t actually feel the difference, you can measure it using Google’s free Namebench program. It told me that OpenDNS was performing that looking-up business 14.8 percent faster than what I’d been getting before.

TYPO CORRECTIONS As long as OpenDNS is inserting itself between you and the Web, it can do you some favors. One is correcting typos. If you type “nytimes.cmo” or “wikipedia.og,” for example, OpenDNS quietly and instantly corrects the typo and sends you where you wanted to go. Most of the time, you never even realize your fingers misfired.

Unfortunately, this feature auto-fixes only the suffix (.com, .org, .gov and so on). If you type “dinseyworld.com” or “wikipeida.org,” you’re on your own.

PHISHING PROTECTION Phishing is the Internet scheme where you get a fake e-mail note from your bank about a problem with your account. When you click the link to correct the problem, you get a fake Web site, designed to look just like your bank’s — and by logging in, you unwittingly supply your name and password to the bad guys.

OpenDNS intercepts and blocks your efforts to visit the fake sites. It works like a charm.

SHORTCUTS Web address shortcuts are short, memorable abbreviations for your favorite sites. You can set up “nyt” so that, when you type it into your address bar, you go to a much longer Web address like http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html.

Shortcuts are great. There’s limited space on your bookmarks toolbar, and the bookmarks menu is clumsy for people who like to keep their hands on the keyboard. And unlike the similar feature in Firefox, OpenDNS’s shortcuts work in any browser on any computer or phone in the house.

PARENTAL CONTROLS The latest OpenDNS feature is site-blocking. Here again, having an account means that you can create a setting that applies to every computer in the house — and block your choice of 57 categories of Web sites, including Pornography, Nudity, Lingerie, Instant Messaging, File Sharing, Game and Humor. (Honestly. What kind of parent would block humor?)

How can OpenDNS possibly track every Web site on earth and put it into the right 57 categories? It doesn’t. Its fans do. Anyone can submit a site to the master database of categorized sites, whereupon other people vote on its placement. This Wikipedia-style crowdsourcing is ingenious, and, as far as my testing was concerned, bulletproof.

(Teenagers often subscribe to mailing lists that publish the addresses of proxies and anonymizers, special sites that they use to get around traditional Web blockers installed by schools or parents. But I was amused to learn that the engineers at OpenDNS subscribe to those lists, too. They block the proxies as fast as they are created.)

All of this OpenDNS goodness is free, automatic and always improving. Surely there’s a catch. How, for example, does OpenDNS make money?

First, although everything described here is free, the company sells additional services to businesses.

Second, if you type the address of a nonexistent site, OpenDNS throws up the equivalent of Google’s “Did you mean?” screen: a list of sites, provided for (and paid for) by Yahoo, that behave as though you’ve done a search for that term. Presto: more income.

About the only worry anyone seems to have about OpenDNS is about privacy. Already, 20 million people use OpenDNS, according to the company — 1 percent of everyone on the Internet. Even if OpenDNS doesn’t know your name or anything about you, couldn’t it be collecting all kinds of Web traffic data, concocting its evil plans?

Of course, whoever is providing your D.N.S. lookups now (not to mention your bank, phone company and grocery store) could be doing exactly the same thing right now. At a certain point, you have to let go.

The biggest realistic challenge may be setting up OpenDNS in the first place. It involves typing two addresses into the D.N.S. settings page of your computer or router: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. That new address directs your computers’ Web requests to OpenDNS’s lookup service.

At OpenDNS.com, the step-by-step instructions take all of two minutes to complete. But fooling around with these network underpinnings may strike some people as intimidating.

You can, if you like, turn on OpenDNS on each computer and phone in your building individually. But it’s much smarter and quicker to make the change on the router itself, the little box that distributes your Internet connection throughout your home. At OpenDNS.com, you’ll find illustrated instructions for each router brand.

In any case, OpenDNS is one of the last great freebies of the Web. It manages to pull off the Google trick: offering, at no charge, incredible utility and speed to the masses — while still finding inoffensive ways to make money. Even if you use only one or two of its features, you’ll find that OpenDNS makes your Web life better.

Come to think of it, you can thank me after all.

By ASHLEE VANCE

Published: August 19, 2010

Making one of most eye-catching moves in its 42-year history, Intel announced Thursday that it planned to acquire McAfee for $7.68 billion in cash.

Under the terms of the deal, Intel will pay $48 a share in cash, a 60 percent premium over McAfee’s Wednesday closing stock price of $29.93.

The deal makes Intel a major player in the security software and services market. As such, Intel will shed some of its identity as a component supplier and climb higher up the technology food chain.

Intel expects the market for security technology to grow as electronic gadgets and things like cars and home appliances increase their computing power and tap into the Internet.

Analysts expect that many of the tools that McAfee provides today may be built-in to chips and devices over time.

“Eventually the software features will get embedded in the hardware,” said Ashok Kumar, a technology analyst with Rodman & Renshaw. “So, maybe this is an expensive way for Intel to acquire domain expertise.”

Heralding the acquisition as part of Intel’s transformation from a “PC company into a computing company,” Intel’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, said that security will only grow as a concern for consumers and businesses.

“This will better protect Internet users and their devices,” Mr. Otellini said, while talking to Wall Street analysts. The safer people feel using their more powerful gadgets, the more chips Intel is likely to sell.

“With the rapid expansion of growth across a vast array of Internet-connected devices, more and more of the elements of our lives have moved online,” Mr. Otellini, said in a statement. “In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences.”

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, has recovered from the recession well, posting record sales in recent quarters. Its results have been aided by rising sales of PCs to both consumers and businesses, and the expanded use of servers and data centers. After its most recent quarter, Intel had about $12.2 billion in cash and short-term investments on hand.

Still, the company’s efforts to put new flavors of lower-power chips into smartphones, TVs, cars and other devices have been slow. As a result, investors have been reluctant to view Intel as a growth bet and continue to see the company as tied to the PC.

The company’s share price has fallen about 20 percent in the last five years, closing on Wednesday at $19.59 a share. McAfee shares were up 57.3 percent on Thursday. Intel shares fell 3.4 percent.

Intel, however, has been bulking up its software arsenal. Last year, it bought Wind River for $884 million, giving it a software maker with a presence in the consumer electronics and wireless markets.

With McAfee, Intel will take hold of a company that sells antivirus software to consumers and businesses and a suite of more sophisticated security products and services aimed at corporations.

In addition, it gives the Silicon Valley veteran a potentially steadier revenue stream than it has found through the often booming and busting computer chip market, since much of the security software is sold on a subscription basis.

McAfee’s revenue rose 20 percent last year to $1.93 billion. Intel’s revenue fell 7 percent to $35.1 billion. At 80 percent, McAfee’s gross margins surpass Intel’s, which tend to be around 65 percent.

Intel builds a variety of security functions directly into its chips and has offered its customers ways to tap into the tools. McAfee’s technology goes well beyond what Intel currently offers.

The companies are both based in Santa Clara, Calif., with head offices about a mile from each other.

As BoomTown reported earlier today, Yahoo Japan confirmed it would switch its search technology and paid search provider to Google from Yahoo.

The move is a definite blow to Yahoo’s new search and advertising alliance with Microsoft (MSFT), although Yahoo (YHOO) sought to minimize the damage in a statement (which you can read below in its entirety).

But make no mistake, given the huge Japanese market: It’s Googzilla totally wiping the floor with MicroHooSoftra.

While it might seem unusual that Yahoo Japan will be using Google’s search, the company is not actually owned by Yahoo, which holds a 35 percent stake.

SoftBank Corp., the giant Japan-based Internet service provider and cell phone provider, has a stake of around 40 percent in Yahoo Japan.

Both SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son–one of the first key investors in Yahoo–and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang sit on the board of Yahoo Japan, which is operated independently as a separate publicly traded company run by President and CEO Masahiro Inoue.

Now that Yahoo Japan and Google (GOOG) have announced their engagement–in a statement at the time of Yahoo Japan’s first-quarter earnings announcement–it is certain that Microsoft will move to stop deal from gaining regulatory approval in Japan, even though a Google spokesman told BoomTown it had already consulted the proper authorities in Japan and had gotten no objections.

Still, I would not expect Microsoft to settle for that, and it is likely to do some lobbying
much as it did successfully when Google tried to enter into a similar deal with Yahoo itself in the U.S. in 2008.

That deal failed after government opposition to the creation of a near-monopoly in search in the U.S. became clear.

In Japan the combination is even worse, with the pair controlling almost the entire market share of search there, both paid and algorithmic.

In search query volume, according to one recent report, Yahoo Japan currently has just over a 53 percent share of the search market and Google has just over 38 percent.

Other polls differ, but it all spells an overwhelming and definite monopoly when combined.

Coincidentally, Bing just entered the Japan market with its branded search, but it has only a small share there of almost three percent.

The same market share among the big players holds in paid search too, with Yahoo Japan and Google controlling almost the whole thing between them.

Maintaining a modicum of competition in Japan was Yahoo’s to lose. And lose it did.

After Yahoo and Microsoft struck their wide-ranging search and online advertising partnership last year, Yahoo Japan–which now uses Yahoo technology for algorithmic and paid search–was then free to pick whatever search service it wanted.

Most expected it to use Microsoft’s Bing technology, which will be powering Yahoo in the U.S. by the end of the year, as well as in many other countries where Yahoo operates.

But, because Yahoo Japan is its own entity, any such deal needed to be negotiated among the parties, putting Yahoo Japan in play, much as if it were AOL (AOL) or News Corp. (NWS) unit MySpace in the U.S.

Investors are sure to ask what Yahoo management was doing as the Google effort took shape.

Those efforts obviously paid off, despite a declaration by Yahoo Japan’s Inoue in an January interview with a Japanese news organization that he was not impressed with some other Google services, such as its Street View mapping service.

Thus, the fallout from this is likely to be tough on Yahoo and also its nascent search relationship with Microsoft.

Yahoo Japan said the date of the switch was yet to be determined.

Here’s the statement from Yahoo on the changeover:

Yahoo! Japan announced that it has chosen to implement Google as its backend algorithmic search engine and paid search infrastructure. Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company, in which Yahoo! holds a 35% equity interest. We amended our agreement with Yahoo! Japan as a result of this decision, and we do not anticipate that this amendment will have a material financial impact on our revenues. We will provide support, as required by our agreement, for the search experience Yahoo! Japan has chosen for its business, and we will continue to partner closely with Yahoo! Japan in other areas including mail, messenger, mobile, our content properties and more.

This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market. We remain confident in our transition plans for the search alliance, are driving innovation in the user experience around search on the Yahoo! network, and continue to be committed to our alliance with Microsoft.

A prototype tablet from India that looks similar to the iPad but costs a few hundred dollars less than the magical device is on its way, according to the country’s government officials who showed the device at an event Thursday.

The Linux-based tablet from India is priced at $35 with the potential to drop it to either $20 or $10. The tablet will support video conferencing and wireless, have open source software on it including Open Office, and will include a media player. It will also have a solar-power option.

The government has not disclosed details about the tablet’s processing power, memory or storage. It is also not clear if the device will have a touchscreen or a pen-based input.

The Indian government hopes to bring the tablet into production in 2011, but first it must find partners to build it. So far, no manufacturers have been announced, though officials claim several have expressed interest.

The success of Apple’s iPad and the demand among consumers for a slick media-consumption tablet has spurred the quest for a low-cost device that has the looks of an iPad and the functionality of a laptop. The One Laptop Per Child Project in the United States recently announced that it is planning to create a $75 OLPC tablet. But the first version of that tablet is unlikely to be available before the end of next year. OLPC’s current low-cost laptop sells for $200.

In March, chip maker Marvell showed a prototype that will offer web access and high-definition content for just $100. The tablet called Moby will be targeted at students, says Marvell, and it will run Marvell’s Armada 600 series of application processors. So far,  Marvell’s $100 tablets have yet to go beyond a reference design.

Current estimates on the cost of components show that getting the cost of a device below $100 isn’t easy.

The cheapest version of Apple’s iPad costs $500. A teardown of the iPad shows the bill of materials alone for it is $230. A six-inch black-and-white screen on a Kindle 2 alone costs $60, according to iSuppli.

To create its $35 tablet, the Indian government says it partnered with some of the country’s best technical universities including the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Students involved in the project created their own motherboard and PCBs for the device, say officials. Interestingly, the government says private companies in the country showed little interest in the idea.

The bill of materials of a prototype tablet came to $47. But officials didn’t explain how they think that cost can shrink to $35 and lower.

“It could be seen that by customizing the device to the needs of learners across the country, and by utilizing the processor capabilities of the processors suitable for the purpose, it was possible to substantially reduce the prices of such access-cum-computing devices,” a press release from the country’s Press Information Bureau said.

Deciphering that is not easy. Even more puzzling is that the announcement of the tablet did not mention who will manufacture the product or how it will be distributed. It is also not clear if the $35 price tag includes a small profit margin or if the product will be sold entirely at cost.

Despite the introduction of the latest tablet with much fanfare, India doesn’t have a history of delivering on its much-hyped promises about electronic devices. For instance, Indian startup Notion Ink has been promising a tablet for months called Adam that is yet to hit the market. In February 2009, Indian government officials announced a $10 laptop that ultimately proved to be vaporware.

The $35 tablet could go the same way.

See Also:

• Marvell Teases with $100 Tablet for Students
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• Gallery: 8 Tablets That Aren’t Made by Apple
• Hands-On With the Apple iPad
• Gallery: E-Readers Push Boundaries of Books

Ok, so I’m probably not going to use that excuse because one shouldn’t joke about starving children, but I still want my own box of Twitter cookies. [I Am Baker via Craftzine via Unplggd]

Send an email to Rosa Golijan, the author of this post, at rgolijan@gizmodo.com.

“The internet has not become the great leveller that it was once thought it could be,” according to Harvard academic Ethan Zuckerman.

Mr Zuckerman was speaking at the TED Global (Technology Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford.

He said that the web was now contrary to the original utopian vision and users focused on information from a handful of wealthy countries.

“It’s making us ‘imaginary cosmopolitans’,” he told delegates.

Social networks, he said, made the problem worse with the majority of people sharing information with folk who share their world-view.

“We think we’re getting a broad view of the world, because it’s possible that our television, newspapers and internet could be giving us a vastly wider picture than was available for our parents or grandparents,” he said.

“When we look at what’s actually happening, our world-view might actually be narrowing.”

Mr Zuckerman, an entrepreneur, blogger and researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said that it was his aim to change the situation and realise the original vision of the net.

Blinkered

He pointed to research that showed the focus of media organisations had also narrowed in recent years.

“When I was growing up in the US in the 1970s, 35-40% of an average nightly newscast focused on international stories,” he told the audience.

“The percentage of international news in an average newscast is now 12-15%.”

He said the internet – and its global reach and infrastructure – could address that gap, but many people chose not to engage.

“The promise of the internet – the idea that everything is just a click away – is that in Britain I can read newspapers from Australia, India, Nigeria, Ghana, Canada, at no cost and end up with a wider view of the world. The truth is that, on average, I won’t.”

On Twitter “oil spill” is a predominantly white topic

He said that in the UK, more than 95% of traffic to the most popular news sites is to domestic sites.

And he saw the same pattern across the world.

For example, he said, most US news focused on North America and countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where its troops were based.

This problem is compounded by social networks, he said.

Tools like Twitter trap people in so-called “filter bubbles”, a phrase put forward by political activist Eli Pariser.

“The internet is too big to understand as a whole, so we get a picture of it that’s similar to what our friends see,” said Mr Zuckerman.

“If you turn to your friends, eventually you get the wisdom of the flock.”

True colours

He highlighted research done by Twitter, which found that almost a quarter of its US users were African-American

“That was pretty surprising to most American users, who assumed that Twitter was just used by nerdy white guys,” he said.

And research by scientists at tech giant IBM had shown that the popular topics of conversation between white users and African American users were very different, highlighting the fact that networks reinforced a certain world view.

For example, he said, cookout was a term mostly used by black twitter users, whilst oil spill was a predominantly white topic.

“The wider world is a click away, but whether we mean to or not, we’re usually filtering it out,” said Mr Zuckerman.

However, Mr Zuckerman said there were solutions that could realise the original vision of the internet and contribute to a greater understanding of the wider world.

The ongoing violence in Madagascar is not widely reported on

Of particular help, he said, would be finding mechanisms to amplify the voices of thousands of bloggers, particularly those in countries under represented in mainstream media.

Crunch time

Mr Zuckerman admitted he had a particular interest in this, as he is one of the founders of a not-for profit network of bloggers called Global Voices, which aims to fill in the gaps in global media coverage.

These networks may be hidden from the wider world until times of crisis, he said.

For example, a network of Madagascan bloggers called Foko club, originally set up to teach high school students English suddenly rose to prominence in 2009 when the president of the country was overthrown and most media organisations were barred from the country.

“Foko were reporting breaking news with their blogs and cellphone cameras,” he said. “If we want a wider world, we’d find ways to raise voices in places we don’t often hear from, like Madagascar.”

He also highlighted a project in China called Yeeyan, which uses a network of 150,000 volunteers to translate and publish 50 to 100 articles each day from western publications, such as The New York Times

“Where’s the English-language version that’s giving us insights into what’s being said in Chinese media?” he asked.

However, he said, to truly realise the vision people needed curators to collect the content together and who bridged different cultures to put content into context.

These bridge figures and xenophiles could then act as “trusted guides” to unfamiliar content.

“My challenge is this: it’s not enough to make a personal decision that you want a wider world,” he said.

“We have to figure out how to rewire the systems we have. We have to fix our media, we have to fix the internet, we have to fix education.”

In addition, he said, the net needed new translation projects and tools along with new mechanisms for discovering content through serendipity.

“That’s what I am trying to do – I need your help,” he said.

TED Global runs from 13-16 July in Oxford, UK.

Apple released the iPhone 4 on June 24

Apple Inc. chief executive officer Steve Jobs. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Consumer Reports’ Gikas Interview About IPhone 4 Flaw

Play Video

July 12 (Bloomberg) — Michael Gikas, senior electronics editor at Consumer Reports, talks with Bloomberg’s Mark Crumpton and Julie Hyman about Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4 reception problem. Consumer Reports said its engineers have just completed testing Apple’s iPhone 4 and have confirmed that a hardware flaw is creating a reception problem. As a result, Consumer Reports said it has decided not to recommend the phone. (Source: Bloomberg)
Wu Interview on Apple Inc.’s Iphone

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July 15 (Bloomberg) — Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros., talks about a potential flaw in the antenna design of Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4. Apple plans to hold a news conference tomorrow about the device. Wu talks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg)
Peter Burrows Discusses Apple’s IPhone 4 Antenna Design

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July 15 (Bloomberg) — Bloomberg’s Peter Burrows talks about Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4 antenna-reception problems. Apple’s senior antenna expert voiced concern to Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs in the early design phase of the iPhone 4 that the antenna design could lead to dropped calls, a person familiar with the matter said. Burrows speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.” (This is an excerpt of the full interview. Source: Bloomberg)

Apple Inc.’s senior antenna expert voiced concern to Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs in the early design phase of the iPhone 4 that the antenna design could lead to dropped calls, a person familiar with the matter said.

Last year, Ruben Caballero, a senior engineer and antenna expert, informed Apple’s management the device’s design may cause reception problems, said the person, who is not authorized to speak on Apple’s behalf and asked not to be identified. A carrier partner also raised concerns about the antenna before the device’s June 24 release, according to another person familiar with the situation.

The latest model of the iPhone carries a metal antenna that surrounds the outside of the device — a design chosen by Apple executives because it yielded a lighter, thinner handset. It has also resulted in reception problems that led Consumer Reports to refrain from endorsing the iPhone 4, weighed on the company’s shares and stepped up pressure on Apple to issue a fix.

Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment and said he wouldn’t make Caballero available for an interview. Caballero didn’t respond to a call and an e-mail seeking comment. Apple plans to hold a press conference tomorrow about the device. Dowling declined to elaborate on what will be discussed.

Apple broke sales records with the iPhone 4, which debuted June 24 in the U.S., the U.K., Japan, France and Germany. The exclusive U.S. carrier is AT&T Inc. Apple’s European partners include Vodafone Group Plc, France Telecom SA and Deutsche Telekom AG. Softbank Corp. carries the iPhone 4 in Japan.

Brand Risk

In the first three days, the company sold 1.7 million devices, the most for any iteration of its top-selling product.

Tests carried out by one of the phone service providers before the device was released also indicated the antenna might cause reception problems, said a person who asked not to be identified because discussions with Apple aren’t public.

Apple, which has built its brand on delivering cool, meticulously crafted designs, may alienate customers as critics continue to point out reception flaws with its device.

Consumer Reports said it isn’t recommending the iPhone 4 following tests confirming the handset has a hardware shortcoming that causes signal quality to degrade. The publication has recommended the three previous iPhone models.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, declined $3.46 to $249.27 on the Nasdaq Stock Market at 9:39 a.m. New York time. The shares had risen 20 percent this year before today.

The company’s stock fell on July 13 on speculation that the Consumer Reports decision may curtail demand among consumers who are on the fence about whether to buy the iPhone 4. Some blogs and a betting company that tracks odds of events said attention to the shortcoming raises the possibility of a product recall — a development analysts deemed unlikely.

Stock Impact

“The stock is being impacted by general concerns about the impact this is having to the brand, and the financial impact, and the uncertainty about what Apple will do about this,” said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon. “A product recall is extremely unlikely.”

Soon after Apple released the iPhone 4 in June, some customers complained about problems losing their signal. Apple last month advised users to buy a case or avoid gripping it in the lower-left corner “in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band.”

“Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas,” Apple said.

The company also said that a software error, dating to the June 2007 release of the first iPhone, has resulted in overstated signal strength, leading users to believe they had better reception than they did. Apple said on July 2 that a software fix will be released “within a few weeks.”

Lengthy Design

With the fix, Apple said it’s adopting a new formula to more accurately calculate how many bars to display.

Apple’s industrial design team, led by Jonathan Ive, submitted several iPhone designs before Jobs and other executives settled on the bezel antenna, said the person familiar with the company’s design. Caballero, the antenna expert, voiced concern in early planning meetings that it might lead to dropped calls and presented a serious engineering challenge, the person said.

The metal bezel surrounding the handset would need to be separated in sections to create individual antennas capable of handling particular ranges of the radio frequencies for different wireless networks, the person said. If a user covered one of the seams between the sections, their finger would act as a conductive material, interfering with the signal, the person said. Consumer Reports suggests iPhone 4 users cover the antenna with duct tape to help mitigate reception woes.

Best-Selling Product

Apple has released an updated version of the iPhone each year since the first model made its debut, including the iPhone 3G in 2008, and the speedier iPhone 3GS in 2009. The iPhone was Apple’s biggest moneymaker last quarter, outselling the Macintosh computer and accounting for 40 percent of sales.

Phone design, from concept to production, can take anywhere from six to 10 months, said Jeff Shamblin, chief technology officer of Ethertronics Inc., a San Diego-based antenna manufacturer whose clients include Samsung Electronics Co.

“The phone keeps changing and it does affect antenna performance,” Shamblin said. “The antenna engineer needs to go back and redesign and retest several times.”

Tests are also conducted by carriers, which help identify potential problems, he said. The Federal Communications Commission also examines the phone, though its review is typically limited to checking whether the phone functions within the allocated frequency bands. The FCC also checks to make sure the phone doesn’t interfere with other devices.

Challenging Test Process

As phones and smartphones have become more complex, the testing process has become challenging, Shamblin said. In years past, engineers conducted tests on phones held against a person’s head, he said. “Now, you have to test against a cell phone sitting on a desk, in a user’s lap, being used on speakerphone while operated with two hands,” he said.

Apple increased that difficulty by innovating on the antenna design. “There’s always risk when you develop a new antenna technology,” he said.

Consumer Reports tested the iPhone and other phones offered by Dallas-based AT&T in an isolation chamber with a device that simulates a carrier’s cell towers.

“None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4,” the organization said. “The tests also indicate that AT&T’s network might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4’s much-reported signal woes.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter Burrows in San Francisco at pburrows@bloomberg.net; Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net.

However Facebook’s increasing success at eyeball retention at over 6 hours per day, compared to 2 hours per day for Google, Yahoo and other social media sites, has had others in a tizzy since it was revealed by Nielsen statistics earlier this year.

Facebook’s coup at eyeball retention had ad-men scurrying towards the site where youth would spend a quarter of their lives socializing with friends on the net and which has rapidly overshadowed the popularity of friends at the club. Now YouTube has announced a new format called ‘Leanback’ in which the viewer will be fed HD videos of his or her choice, one after another, so that they do not have to surf the website to select programs of their choice.

In May of this year, Google, the owners of YouTube, battling to retain the largest chunk of online ads, revealed their plan to unleash internet-focused television, with new features of browsing on auto feed without the use of remote when Sony launches its new range of products in the fall this year.

YouTube, though the biggest of the video sites, hopelessly languishes in eyeball retention amongst the video segment, perhaps because it does not look at solutions from the user’s point of view. The problem with its thinking is that viewers will never give up the choice to eject dumb program mes from their screens and YouTube has no mechanism in its site to ensure viewer popularity other than celebrity videos.

As a matter of fact, YouTube’s video selection for featured videos and promotion of those selected as featured presentations, leaves a lot to be desired. When compared it to smaller presentation sites like SlideShare or Scribd, which also feature YouTube videos, the shortcomings are obvious.

There is no mechanism by which a video uploaded on YouTube gets a decent viewership unless actively promoted. Whereas a SlideShare upload would give a reasonably well done video a few hundred views per day for the first week, and Scribd would ensure at least half the eyeballs were on the video, but on YouTube, such a video would go virtually unnoticed unless actively promoted by search engines.

Maybe  key words get lost in the maze of YouTube, or perhaps the site is too big and unwieldy with its 4.6 billion streams for one to categorize and feature in its pages for easy public viewership.  It’s possible it needs its home page load to be re-distributed by category-wise inner pages or a development of category-based communities like the other presentation sites have.

Whatever it may be, YouTube will have to look into the micro-features of its site and facilitate social interaction to increase the eyeball retention, instead of adding auto feed formats to surf videos. For apart from watching music videos on auto feed, it is very difficult to conceive that other videos shall suit the user’s mood, tastes and needs on a pre-set basis.

http://technorati.com/business/article/youtube-steps-up-bid-for-eyeball/page-2/