Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Invests $300m in Twitter

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a Saudi billionaire and investor in some of the world’s top companies, has bought a stake in social network Twitter for $US300 million, gaining another foothold in the global media industry. The nephew of Saudi Arabia’s king was estimated by Forbes magazine this year to have a fortune of more than $US19 billion. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal already owns a 7 per cent stake in News Corp and plans to start a cable news channel. Read the full article »»»»

Apple vs Samsung: Samsungs Henka Move

In the war that has been Apple vs Samsung, the latter has won what could be the final slap-down.

Samsung has won the right to sell its Galaxy 10.1 tablet in Australia after the Federal Court overturned a ban on the sale of the computer. Last month, the court slapped a temporary injunction on sales of the Galaxy 10.1 after rival Apple said the Galaxy range of tablets and smartphones was too similar to its iPad and iPhone. Read the full article »»»»

University of Melbourne Has Developed Algorithm Explaining Viral Video

A marketing professor at the University of Melbourne says he has developed an algorithm to explain what makes an internet video go viral.

YouTube has only existed for six years, but already there are more than 20 videos that have each been viewed by more than 100 million people. Videos that go viral often depict funny or amusing situations captured by everyday people – like ‘Charlie bit my finger’, featuring a young boy complaining of his baby brother’s toothy habits, which has exceeded 100 million views.

Until now no-one has had a real theory about what makes a video go viral, but University of Melbourne marketing professor Dr Brent Coker thinks his algorithm can explain the success of viral videos. Read the full article »»»»

ADOBE TO KILL OFF FLASH

Adobe Recasts Flash as an App Builder and Embraces HTML5, the Flash Mobile Killer

. . . you can’t play Flash content on an iPhone or iPad?! Well, you can cross that argument off the mobile decision list. As we predicted back in early October: Adobe Kills Flash.  According to a scoop last night on ZDNet, Adobe has announced that they are stopping development on Flash Player for mobile browsers. ”Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations.”

Adobe is, in fact, finally heeding Steve Jobs’ advice. In a public letter – below – about Flash last year, Jobs said, “Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind” Read the full article »»»»

India: $36 Tablet PC

The Indian Government has unveiled a prototype of a touchscreen, tablet computer, the Aakash Tablet PC will go on sale for $36. As more data is migrated to the cloud simple web-enabled platforms such as tablet-pc’s will replace the bloated desktop and laptop hardware architectures of today, the future is apparently mobile.

That other behemoth, India,  has launched what it’s dubbed as the world’s cheapest tablet computer, to be sold to students at the subsidised price of $36 and later in shops for about $61. Most of India’s 1.2 billion people are poor and products such as Apple iPad are beyond the reach even of many in the fast-growing middle class. The government is buying the first units of the lightweight touch-screen device, called Aakash, or “sky” in Hindi, for $51 each from a British company which is assembling the web-enabled devices in India. Read the full article »»»»