Looks Like A Kodak

The website has Kodak splashed all-over, the camera looks like a Kodak, is marketed like a Kodak, geez they even have Kodak’s heritage listed. It isn’t a Kodak, it’s JK Imaging. Early last year, just prior to going into bankruptcy, the Eastman Kodak Company announced the ditching of its digital camera range.

At the time Kodak was in a large amount of pain, blaming the demise of low end digital cameras on the rise in quality of smartphone cameras, After re-financing and a quick but brutal reshuffle; including selling-off licensing agreements, ditching almost 30,000 workers and a beefed up patent war. Kodak under the helmsmanship of CEO Antonio Perez is slowly resurrecting.

Kodak-branded cameras looked set to be consigned to the history books, destined to become dusty relics collected by odd-little folk who speak lots of remember-whens. Fortunately for brand-watchers – and folk who refuse to buy into the pro-photog look – LA based JK Imaging snapped up a brand licensing deal earlier this year that has seen the Kodak brand once again brandished on a new wave of digital cameras :: Read the full article »»»»

Andrew Mason OUTWEIRDS Zuckerberg As Weirdest CEO… Oops Your Sacked

The group shopping website Groupon has fired its chief executive and co-founder as the company struggles to turn around its poor earnings and crumbling share price.

On the day its stock slid 24 per cent after reporting dismal quarterly results, the daily deals company said Andrew Mason was asked to step down.

In an unusually candid letter to staff, Mr Mason confessed he was getting in the way of the company he co-founded just a few years ago and had failed in his role as leader.

“After four-and-a-half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why… you haven’t been paying attention,” Mr Mason wrote in a memo to staff.

“From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.”

Co-founder Eric Lefkofsky and board member Ted Leonsis will lead the company until a permanent chief executive is found. Groupon declined to comment on potential candidates :: Read the full article »»»»

Wozniak Worries About Clouds

SMH Digital Life’s Robert McPherson has a really amusing piece on Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who is  apparently predicting “horrible problems” for cloud computing in coming years.

Wozniak, 61, was the star turn at the penultimate performance in Washington of Mike Daisey’s controversial one man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a two-hour expose of Apple’s labor conditions in China.

In a post-performance dialogue with Daisey and audience members, Wozniak held forth on topics as varied as public education (he once did a stint as a school teacher) and reality TV (having appeared on Dancing with the Stars).

The engineering genius behind the progenitor of today’s personal computer, the Apple II, was most outspoken on the shift away from hard disks towards uploading data into remote servers, known as cloud computing :: Read the full article »»»»

TWITTER BOMB

A UK man who joked on Twitter that he would BLOW UP an airport after it closed because of snow has had his conviction for sending a “menacing” message overturned in a landmark ruling for users of social media websites.

Paul Chambers, 28, had sent the message in what he called a moment of frustration at not being able to catch a flight from Doncaster Robin Hood airport. Mr Chambers had later been arrested and sentenced but the High Court on Friday upheld his appeal against conviction. Speaking outside the court afterwards, Mr Chambers’ barrister John Cooper, who had argued it was wrong to associate the tweet with terrorism, said it was a milestone ruling.

In Friday’s High Court ruling, three judges headed by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, allowed Mr Chambers’ appeal against a Crown Court judge’s decision upholding the 2010 conviction. They said: “If the person or persons who receive or read it, (the message) or may reasonably be expected to receive, or read it, would brush it aside as a silly joke, or a joke in bad taste, or empty bombastic or ridiculous banter, then it would be a contradiction in terms to describe it as a message of a menacing character.” :: Read the full article »»»»

UPDATE! Kaspersky’s Flame

Last week we reported on a stunning new virus discovered by Kaspersky Labs - FLAME – The Russian cyber security software-maker Kaspersky Lab had discovered the highly sophisticated computer virus in Iran, they believe was deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber terrorism. Responsibility for discovering the virus, which has been dubbed ‘Flame’.

Kaspersky said evidence suggested that it may have been built on behalf of the same nation, or nations, that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

UPDATE! The Flame computer virus which has been raging in the Middle East has strong links to Stuxnet, a malware program widely believed to have been developed by the United States or Israel, the security firm said :: Read the full article »»»»