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<title>Haaze.com / analryexpandy / Published News</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:10:47 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Consumer electronics sales rebound]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=consumer-electronics-sales-rebound</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=consumer-electronics-sales-rebound</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:10:47 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>analryexpandy</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=consumer-electronics-sales-rebound</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Consumer electronics have staged a recovery this year.Consumer electronics makers are expected to grab sales of $340.4 billion for 2010, up 6.2 percent from the $320.7 billion seen in 2009, according to data released yesterday by iSuppli. That contrasts with last year when sales dropped 4.4 percent compared with 2008.&quot;As shown in the early results from Black Friday, consumer confidence levels in 2010 are higher in all regions of the world than they were in 2009, and buyers are more inclined to acquire new devices or upgrade old electronics equipment,&quot; Jordan Selburn, principal analyst for consumer platforms at iSuppli, said in a statement.iSuppli also sees a sustained rise over the next four years, with sales ranging anywhere from $3 billion to $18 billion annually, reaching more than $385 billion in 2014. The growth will benefit a variety of manufacturers, including makers of TVs, DVD and Blu-ray players, digital cameras, portable media players, video game consoles, e-book readers, and other consumer gadgets.Just about every product category is showing sales gains over last year, but the companies producing LCD TVs and Blu-ray players are at the top of the list, according to iSuppli. Across the globe, more than 178 million LCD TVs are likely to ship this year, bringing in sales of almost $95 billion. But this is traditionally a strong segment as even during last year's downturn, LCD TV shipments rose 40 percent.Shipments of Blu-Ray players will hit 16.4 million this year, a jump of 82 percent over 2009. Sales will grow by 50 percent annually over the next two years, says iSuppli. By 2014, shipments will reach 68.9 million, almost eight times more than last year. But the longer-term outlook for Blu-ray players may be less rosy.With video game consoles, media players, and TVs able to stream movies and other video content, the need for a device that plays physical discs may start to wane. As a result, iSuppli doesn't expect the Blu-Ray player to have the same relatively long lifespan as the DVD player.After reaching a peak last year, shipments of dedicated portable media players are also likely to fall short as such devices increasingly face competition from smartphones that can also play multimedia.Though its current forecast for consumer electronics is optimistic, iSuppli says that certain factors could put a damper on sales growth.&quot;Potential trouble could lie ahead, especially if the fragile economic recovery unspools and consumers decide to withhold precious spending dollars,&quot; Selburn said. &quot;Furthermore, inventories of consumer goods are beginning to accumulate. And although overall unit shipments for electronic devices will keep growing in the years ahead, the continual price erosion that is a hallmark of the consumer market will lead to slowing revenue increases after 2012.&quot;<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Report: Groupon rejects Google's offers]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-groupon-rejects-googles-offers</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-groupon-rejects-googles-offers</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>analryexpandy</dc:creator>
<category>Mobile &amp; Electronics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=report-groupon-rejects-googles-offers</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Google's pursuit of red-hot social buying start-up Groupon may have come to an end. Citing two sources familiar with the talks, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that Groupon, a fellow resident of Chicago, has decided to go it alone, passing up an offer to be acquired by Google for between $5 billion and $6 billion. The report suggested Groupon hasn't made a final decision about whether it wants to pursue an initial public offering but might go down that road next year. Talks had been reportedly hot and heavy between Groupon and Google, always looking to boost its presence in local advertising markets and acquire sources of data about consumer buying intent. Groupon offers a &quot;deal of the day&quot; to users, usually a significant discount on a sought-after product or service in their city or town. Google would love to add that kind of service geared around specifically targeted local markets, which is seen as a big source of future Internet advertising growth. It's not clear if Google was unwilling to go high enough for Groupon's tastes (although $6 billion would have been Google's largest purchase by a significant margin) or if Groupon simply believed it could chart its own path, following start-ups such as Twitter that have drawn Google's interest but generated momentum on their own: All Things D reported earlier on Friday that Groupon was doing as much as $2 billion a year in revenue. A Google representative declined to comment on what the company termed &quot;rumor and speculation,&quot; while representatives Groupon did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Facebook &''Thinking&'' Of Offering Mass Contact Export Since&nbsp'2004]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=facebook-8220thinking8221-of-offering-mass-contact-export-sincenbsp2004</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=facebook-8220thinking8221-of-offering-mass-contact-export-sincenbsp2004</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>analryexpandy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=facebook-8220thinking8221-of-offering-mass-contact-export-sincenbsp2004</guid>
<description><![CDATA[photo a4s 2010 Digitpedia Com | more info (via: Wylio)The flames of contact info-gate got stoked again this holiday weekend with the release of a particularly inflammatory Google Chrome Extension a4AFacebook Doesna4a4t Own My Friends.a4 The extension was taken down minutes after our post went up and I have still heard no word from Facebook or Google on which was responsible for the shut down (my guess is that Facebook changed its email displays from text over to images before Google could pull the extension).When asked about the issue at Web 2.0 Summit, Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that he wasna4a4t sure that Facebook was a4A100% right&amp;'' in preventing Gmail or other third party apps from crawling the site, and referred to the difference between information you yourself put into an email application versus information put into a social network by people you&amp;'ve chosen to befriend as a factor in what the eventual universal export policy will be, &amp;''We&amp;'re trying to think through these things and be respectful of all the forces that are at play.&amp;'' In other words, ita4a4s complicated.While Facebook a4Athinks through these things,a4 it seem to making some bold moves, from kicking off power user Robert Scoble for trying to scrape his contacts through Plaxo in 2008 to eliminating the Gmail option entirely from a4AFind My Friendsa4 while allowing unlimited (albeit problematic) contact info access to partners Yahoo and Hotmail.To give us a better sense of the evolution of Facebooka4a4s contact info policy, a tipster who might have been the first person to attempt mass Facebook email scraping, sent us the below string of support emails between himself and Facebook proto-employee Dustin Moskovitz, resulting from attempts to aggregate the contact info of everyone in the Princeton network in 2004.On Aug 22, 2004, at 7:52 PM, thefacebook &amp;8211' General Information wrote:Hi,I deactivated your account because of a security violation. Let me know what you were up to if you&amp;'re interested in getting it back.Dustin @ thefacebook&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'-On Sun, 22 Aug 2004, xxx xxxx wrote:Hi Dustin,I have written a script to go and collect the picture, cell phonea4snumber, birthday, hometown, and year of everyone at Princeton. Then,a4susing the princeton ldap directory, I looked up information like rooma4sphone number, room address, and email address. I then exported all ofa4sthis in vCard format, to be imported into my mac&amp;'s Address Booka4s program, and put on my iPod.I probably should have run this at night, so that I did not cause aa4sslowdown for other users. However, I reviewed this section of thea4sprivacy policy, and didn&amp;'t think I was violating any of it with mya4sscript. But I&amp;'ll be interested to hear your take on that.a4AThe Web site is for the personal use of individual Members only and maya4snot be used in connection with any commercial endeavors. Organizations,a4scompanies, and/or businesses may not become Members and should not usea4sthe Service or the Web site for any purpose. Illegal and/ora4sunauthorized uses of the Web site, including collecting email addressesa4sof members by electronic or other means for the purpose of sending unsolicited email and unauthorized framing of or linking to the Weba4ssite will be investigated, and appropriate legal action will be taken,a4sincluding without limitation, civil, criminal, and injunctive redress.&amp;''If you want me to stop, I&amp;'ll stop. It&amp;'s your site. However, if you area4sconcerned with an overuse issue rather than a privacy issue, I woulda4sappreciate it if you would allow me to continue where I left off, whicha4sis at Katy Bacon. I wouldn&amp;'t mind setting it to run at night, in smalla4sbatches, or whatever. But again, if you don&amp;'t want me to do it, I won&amp;'tdo it, no questions asked.a4I guess I&amp;'d appreciate getting the xxx xxx account back, buta4snobody needs or uses the ulink account.Look forward to hearing from you,xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'&amp;8212'- From: thefacebook &amp;8211' General Information &amp;lt'info@thefacebook.com&amp;gt'Date: August 22, 2004 6:33:11 PM PDTTo: xxxxxx &amp;lt'xxxxxx@Princeton.EDU&amp;gt'Subject: Re: Security ViolationHi xxxx,So the slowdown isn&amp;'t really an issue, but we pretty much don&amp;'t wanta4speople to aggregate the information available on the website. Part of thea4sreason people are willing to provide so much information is because of thea4ssecurity and privacy we built into the site.I was pretty much assuming you were going for the email addresses, but ona4sfurther consideration, I&amp;'m probably going to change the privacy policya4sfrom &amp;''collecting email addresses&amp;'' to &amp;''collecting email addresses or othera4scontact information&amp;'' for the future.We are in the process of developing a feature where you can export vcardsa4sfor your friends (one of them, or all of them at once) and we&amp;'ll probablya4srelease it relatively soon. I&amp;'d appreciate it if you would use thata4sinstead of collecting info on everyone at Princeton.I&amp;'ve reactivated your account.The moral of this blast from the past The more things change the more things stay the same, other than that whole a4ANo businesses on Facebook thing.&amp;'' Well maybe we could also amend Moskovitza4a4sa4sa4AWe pretty much don&amp;'t wanta4speople to aggregate the information available on the website,a4 statement with a4Aunless of course they are an ad partner.a4The most interesting thing is about this exchange is that even in 2004, Moskovitz realized the sheer utility of being able to export your a4sFacebook Friend contacts (as opposed to everyone at Princeton) and explicitly references a feature in the works where you could export VCards for your Friends. After all you built those relationships.That mythical VCard feature, which never actually appeared, sounds similar to the universal export that Facebook took advantage of when Google took away access to its API and would allow you to do exactly what the short-lived Google Chrome extension did on Friday before it was shut down. Herea4a4s to hoping the feature will one day see the light of day.CrunchBase InformationFacebookGoogleInformation provided by CrunchBase<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[Return of the Celtic Tiger: Can renewables refuel the Irish economy]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=return-of-the-celtic-tiger-can-renewables-refuel-the-irish-economy</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=return-of-the-celtic-tiger-can-renewables-refuel-the-irish-economy</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>analryexpandy</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=return-of-the-celtic-tiger-can-renewables-refuel-the-irish-economy</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Ireland has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, starring in a soap opera of EUintrigueand enforced bank bailouts. Watching my home country&amp;'s progress over the past few years has been like the troubled career of singer Amy Winehouse: huge talent and instant riches followed by a rapid and self-inflicted downward spiral cataloged in tabloid headlines.In Dublin recently for the first time in years, I heard some good news in the midst of all the gloom. The country has a head start on most of the world in capitalizing on one of its few plentiful resources: renewable energy.Renewable energy could be Ireland&amp;'s new pot of gold. According to a recent book by John Travers, 100,000 jobs could be created from harnessing renewable energy and applying energy efficiency, and 20 percent of Ireland&amp;'s future GDP could come from exporting its renewable energy. The wind and wave power available on Ireland&amp;'s Atlantic coast is one of the biggest renewable resources in the world and can be supplemented by biomass. To put this in context, the nation&amp;'s peak electricity demand is approximately 6,000 megawatts (MW) while the wind blowing over the island contains 8,000 megawattsof power. Ireland already has 1260 MW of installed wind capacity. The country also aims to put 500 MWs of wave power online by 2020.As a result Enterprise Ireland&amp;'s cleantech unit is concentrating its resources of a limited set of niches, among them energy efficiency and renewables. According to Marina Donohoe, who heads up the unit, these areas were chosen because of Ireland&amp;'s strengths in IT and construction (that property bubble was useful for something) in addition to the large supply of renewable energy.I talked to Professor Orla Feely from University College Dublin,who recently reviewed Ireland&amp;'s smart grid research, about the areas in which Ireland is ahead of the rest of the world. She told me that universities are taking a multi-disciplinary approach to the energy problem, looking at not just the technical aspects like modelling high levels of integration of renewables, but also collaborating with economists and behavioral scientists since customer and electricity generator behavior needs to change.This was a point echoed by Eirgrid&amp;'s Jon O&amp;' Sullivan (Eirgrid manages Ireland&amp;'s electricity transmission network), who isadamantthat the economics of energy generation must be updated in order to ramp up renewables. Energy generation pricing is currently based on the assumption that fuel is the main cost of generation. This is obviously not the case with renewables, so he suggests that generators should also be paid for services they provide such as reactive power and power storage. Feely also pointed to Ireland&amp;'s experience in areas like building research and smart sensors. No less important, she says that Ireland has a very supportive policy environment and a small number of key players, which gives it a flexibility and agility in smart grid that is hard to match. Ironically, Ireland&amp;'s &amp;''two degrees of separation,&amp;'' which caused many of its problems in banking and politics, could actually be an advantage in this case.Ireland&amp;'s power grid is rather unique in that it&amp;'s an island grid with very limited interconnection to the rest of Europe. Mainline Europe&amp;'s grid, for example, is very closely connected, which means that an individual country&amp;'s grid can effectively &amp;''trade itself out of trouble&amp;'' using supplies from neighboring countries. Ireland&amp;'s grid operates largely independently. It also has an unusually high penetration of wind power. On one day in April this year 42% of the Irish grid was powered by wind. This is the highest worldwide wind penetration on a power grid to date. The average is closer to 15 percent of power supplied by renewables, but the Irish government has a target to increase this to 40 percent by 2020 (37 percent from wind power). As a result, Irish grid operators are already tackling problems caused by the integration of high levels of renewables that will hit other grids later.Ireland&amp;'s power grid is managed by two entities. Eirgrid operates the high-voltage transmission network, while ESB runs the medium and low voltage distribution network and deals with consumers. Jon O&amp;' Sullivan is Eirgrid&amp;'s Operations Policy &amp;amp' Performance manager. He told me that there are several aspects to integrating high levels of renewables. New connection infrastructure is needed to connect the generation sites to the network. There are operational challenges involved in managing the high levels of non-synchronous, intermittent power of the type generated by wind farms (conventional power is synchronous and constant) and optimizing portfolio performance.The latter covers non-technical issues like figuring out how to make renewables economically viable without subsidies (unsustainable at 40 percent of generation), setting standards for new power generators, changing the pricing structure for generation and identifying investment gaps.O&amp;'Sullivan filled me in on some of the technical tools that Eirgrid is pioneering to manage a transmission grid with high levels of renewables. One of these is a wind stability assessment tool that is used to maintain voltage stability (wind farms cause voltage rises) and is the first such system in the world installed in a national utility control room. The tool and other research have indicated that grid stability can be maintained at up to 70 percent wind penetration, if certain measures are taken. Eirgrid will soon start to use the tool for forecasting up to 48 hours ahead in addition to real-time operation.Another innovation is the wind dispatch tool that controls 60-70 percent of the country&amp;'s wind farms in real-time. Wind turbines can be ramped up or down within 10 seconds. Quite often farms need to be ramped down when more wind power is being fed into the grid than is manageable. A new connector will also be in place by 2012 that will allow 500 megawatts of power to be exported from the country. Exporting renewable power can help with grid stabilization since it helps to achieve a better balance between conventional generation and renewables.Teresa Fallon is in change of smart networks at ESB. She told me that Ireland&amp;'s wind generation is unusual in that it&amp;'s quite distributed.   Over 50 percent of wind generation will be done at multiple, smaller wind sites connected  at distribution voltage levels (38kV, medium and low voltage) rather than to the high-voltage transmission network.    To minimize the  amount of new equipment and infrastructure  required to connect these sites and to avoid negative impact on the rest of the grid, ESB is  trialing  some innovative new techniques. One of these is using voltage regulators to drop the voltage coming from the wind farms (wind power causes voltage rises) thereby allowing the power generated to be carried on existing power lines rather than new lines built specifically  for renewable power. Voltage regulators are traditionally used to boost voltage rather than drop it.A trial is also taking place where wind farms are being managed as a group, rather than individually, to do voltage-var control. Var is reactive power, which is drawn by many modern electronic devices. High levels of reactive power makes it harder to stabilize grid voltage and result in power loss, so software is needed to balance voltage and var. Groupingvoltage-var control across wind farms reduces the amount of new equipment needed  to enable Eirgrid and ESB to manage wind farms on the network. Finally, ESB is looking at a new distribution substation design specifically adapted for wind generators. Fallon said that many of the problems with renewables that other countries are looking at now  in terms of developing a co-coordinated approach to renewable connections, Ireland went through 10 years ago. The  challenges are broadly the same whether the energy source is wind or solar.My final stop was Andrew Parish, the CEO of wave power company Wavebob. One report estimates that the Irish wave energy resource could generate more than 6,000 megawatts of power.Parish is convinced that Ireland could be the Saudi Arabia of wave power, since it has access to the best wave resource on the planet. The industry is still in its infancy though and is quite dependent on government support since the up-front capital costs are considerable. That government doesn&amp;'t have to be Irish, however. Wavebob recently received a grant of $2.4 million from the US Department of Energy to to prepare for a commercial-scale wave energy demonstration project planned for US waters in 2013. More generally, the early wave power markets will be in Europe in places likeIreland, Portugal and the UK. The Irish government has a target to bring 500 megawatts of wave power online by 2020.The problem with unlocking Ireland&amp;'s renewables &amp;''pot of gold&amp;'' is that it requires major upfront capital investment, and cash is exactly what the Irish government doesn&amp;'t have right now. In spite of this, the 4-year austerity plan introduced as part of the recent bailout does include investing a4s4.5 billion in the electricity grid to develop renewable resources. So who knows Maybe green can mean gold for Ireland.Previous Story: Google rumored to delay its big social initiative until the springPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: ireland, renewables, smartgrid, wave power, wind powerCompanies: eirgrid, Enterprise Ireland, esb, wavebob          Tags: ireland, renewables, smartgrid, wave power, wind powerCompanies: eirgrid, Enterprise Ireland, esb, wavebobCiara Byrne is a full time techie and part-time writer. She has worked as a software developer, team lead, engineering manager and mobile standards expert. Ciara is based in Amsterdam and her interests include creative companies, useful technology, torture by piano and cycling in high heels. Follow her on Twitter at @deciara. VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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