Bits Blog: A Lot Changes in Tech Over Four Years

Sony Posts a Small Profit, Its First in 5 Years

The Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment giant said that it had booked a net profit of 43 billion yen, or $435 million, in the financial year that ended March 31. That compares with a loss of 456.7 yen billion ($4.6 billion) a year earlier. Sales grew 4.7 percent to 6.8 trillion yen ($68.4 billion).

Sony said it expected net profit to increase 16 percent in the current year to 50 billion yen ($505 million). It projected that sales would rise 10 percent this year to 7.5 trillion yen after the company releases a new video game console, the PlayStation 4, during the holiday season and bolsters its smartphone offerings.

The weaker yen, which makes Japanese products more price-competitive in foreign markets, was especially pronounced in the fourth quarter, from January through March. Sony said net profit was 93.9 billion yen ($949 million), compared with a net loss of 255.2 billion yen ($2.6 billion) in the same quarter a year earlier.

Higher revenue from its financial services unit contributed significantly to full-year profits. Sony has also streamlined to claw its way back to profit, dissolving flat-panel television manufacturing ventures with Sharp and Samsung, shedding its chemical product business and selling off its office buildings, including its New York headquarters, for $1.1 billion.

“We set out this year with the aim of doing everything we can to get back in the black,” Masaru Kato, Sony’s chief financial officer, said in a conference call with analysts in Tokyo. “This year, we absolutely intend to make a profit in electronics.”

Kazuo Hirai, who took over as chief executive in April 2012, is trying to revive Sony’s electronics division, which continues to lose money. Last week, Sony announced that dozens of top executives had agreed to forgo bonuses after continued red ink in the unit.

Mr. Hirai faces a struggle. Once a consumer electronics powerhouse, Sony has in recent years been outshone by the likes of Apple and outgunned by the marketing and manufacturing prowess of Samsung.

Profits in the games division were lower last year after the disappointing performance of its PlayStation Vita hand-held machine, which made its debut in late 2011. Sony slashed the device’s price this year.

Though Sony booked an annual profit, its television business lost money for the eighth straight year, with sales slumping 30 percent from a year earlier. But its losses have been narrowing as Sony has outsourced its panel-making, falling by 137.9 billion yen ($1.4 billion) from a year earlier to 69.6 billion ($707 million). Sony said it expected to finally break even in televisions this year.

The company will be helped by a major decline in the value of the yen, part of the economic policy of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The weaker yen buttresses the bottom line of exporters like Sony by increasing the value of their overseas earnings. Sony said, however, that as its business became more global and the company incurred more of its costs in dollars, currency fluctuations would have less of an effect.

Sony also struggled in its digital camera and video business, hurt by a shrinking market for compact cameras and camcorders as more users chose to snap photographs and take video with their smartphones. However, Sony has found some success with high-end cameras with interchangeable lenses for photography buffs.

Sales in Sony’s film business grew 11 percent, thanks to blockbusters like the James Bond movie “Skyfall” and “The Amazing Spider-Man.” The sluggish market for packaged music continued to weigh on the music division, though hits like “Take Me Home” and “Up All Night” from the boy-band sensation One Direction helped stave off a sales decline.

Sony is still seeking to exploit the relationships between its hardware business and its vast catalog of music and films. Though its entertainment business has generated healthy profits, the company has yet to deliver on its long-promised strategy of leveraging that material to sell more electronics — for example, by offering exclusive content on Sony devices.

Flavor Flav Looking At 12 years in Jail For Assault With Knife

A Las Vegas judge has that a trial of Flavor Flav will move on, charging that the rapper threatened his fiancé and her 17-year-old son with a butcher knife.
The 54-year-old rapper will stand trial for a pair of felonies and faces up to 12 years in jail. On April 18, the famed Public Enemy hype man will be arraigned formally on felony charges of assault with a weapon and child endangerment.
Flav, real name William Jonathan Drayton Jr., is expected to plead not guilty.
Reports say he pushed his fiancé down to the ground in October and chased her and her son around with butcher knives in their Las Vegas home.

App Smart: Tech Reminders for Keeping Those New Year’s Resolutions

This year it’s different. I’m using some apps to help me stick to my resolutions. We’ll see whether the best 21st-century motivational companion is the smartphone or tablet. If you want to try the experiment, too, here’s where to start.

The Astrid Tasks/To-do List app (free on iOS and Android) is not specifically meant for keeping resolutions, but as its name suggests it’s both a to-do list app and a reminders app. To use it for resolutions, just enter them as tasks and set repeating reminders. With all your data inside, Astrid becomes your portable digital conscience, gently nagging you to hit the gym, practice the piano, leave work on time and so on. (Ah, if only my smartphone knew when I was picking up a piece of chocolate.)

The app’s interface is simplicity itself. It’s a list of the tasks you’ve entered, with icons that tell you if each one has been completed or if it’s a recurring task. Entering a task (or a resolution, in this case) is easy: click “add,” type in the resolution and select a reminder alarm if you need one. In my case, the app is going to ping me at 9 a.m. every day to remind me to take a morning jog. If you need moral support, you can tell the app to share your goals with friends via e-mail or Facebook.

The iOS and Android apps differ a bit. The iOS version is cuter, thanks to its icons and cleaner design; the Android version is trickier to operate (I found it hard to see the little “save” icon when setting the time for a reminder, for example). But both versions work well, and both integrate with a cloud-based database so you can sync all your goal data among your devices.

Lift, free on iOS, is a similar motivational app, but with a community angle. The core of this app is a social network: you join groups that help you achieve a goal. For example, if your New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking, several groups can help you do so. You check in with these groups and comment on your actions and the group’s activity, and you can even earn a thumbs-up from group members for your progress.

The app lists existing groups in categories like “popular,” “fitness habits” and “learning habits,” or you can create your own group and invite friends to join you. For those who need a bit of social encouragement to stick to their resolutions, this app may be the best option.

While Lift does have reminders, they’re not the app’s main function, which means it will require a degree of willpower to remember your resolution, turn the app on and check in. The forgetful may not find it the best choice for keeping resolutions.

A new fitness or health regimen is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions, and Fitocracy (free on iOS) is an app that can help you stick to it. It has a social group setup similar to Lift’s, but it’s exercise-centric, with a much jollier design.

For example, during setup the button to advance to the next settings page is labeled “go forth!” rather than a boring “next.” This playful attitude is really what the app is all about. It awards you points when you finish activities and has gamelike features like reward badges and even “level ups.” This combination of lightheartedness and a sense of community spirit may be exactly what you need to help you keep exercising.

For a simpler, calendar-based app to help you keep a resolution, try Streaks — Motivational Calendar ($2 on iTunes). After you’ve added a goal, you tap on the app’s calendar to cross off a day when you achieve the goal. It’s a little like playing a game; the app keeps track of the longest streak of days you’ve managed, and your current number.

Though it is much less sophisticated than the others mentioned here, it’s ideal for those pressed for time, because interacting with it is so fast. Momentum Builder is a free Android app similar to Streaks, though its design is not as polished.

I look at a bunch of other resolution-binding apps on the Gadgetwise blog.

Happy New Year from me to you! May your apps help your resolutions come true.

Quick Calls

Google’s Zeitgeist app, free on Android, is a great way to look back at 2012. It’s an interface to Google’s report on how the world searched during the year, and it’s crammed with fascinating data. ... Nokia’s free Xpress, which compresses Web data so your phone doesn’t consume so much of your 3G or 4G data allowance, has been updated to be compatible with all Windows 8 phones. It had been limited to Nokia handsets only.

TIMESCAST: New Year’s in Times Square Goes Digital

December 26, 2012By Fritzie Andrade, Krishnan Vasudevan and David Gillen

TimesCast Media+Tech: Song apps to keep the party going. | A conversation with Allure’s 85-year-old plastic surgery editor, Joan Kron. | A look at the social media tied to the ball drop.

Oracle Paying Next Year’s Dividends Now, at Low Tax Rate

Dividend payments are taxed at a preferential rate of 15 percent, but taxes could rise as high as 39.6 percent, depending on a taxpayer’s income bracket, if the Bush-era tax cuts expire as scheduled on Dec. 31. Higher income taxpayers will also be subject to a 3.8 percent surcharge on most investment income like dividends to help pay for President Obama’s health care law. That could bring the total possible tax rate on dividends to as much as 43.4 percent.

The Obama administration, which is pushing for higher dividend tax rates, is negotiating with Republicans in Congress over about $600 billion in automatic tax increases and government spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect in January, but no agreement is in sight.

Oracle accelerated second-, third- and fourth-quarter cash dividends totaling 18 cents a share of common stock, equivalent to $867 million, according to Thomson Reuters data.

In some cases, insiders are among the biggest beneficiaries of the special payouts, as well as shifts of regular dividends into 2012 from 2013. Oracle’s chief executive, Larry Ellison, the technology company’s largest shareholder, is entitled to dividends worth $198.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters data. Mr. Ellison did not participate in discussions or vote on the matter, Oracle said in a statement on Monday.

The accelerated dividend will be paid to stockholders of record as of the close of business on Dec. 14, with a payment date of Dec. 21, 2012.

Rihanna Reveals She Hasn’t Been on a Date in Two Years

For anyone who’d like a date with Rihanna, it’s as simple as asking her out.In the November issue of Vogue, the pop star opens up: “I have not been on a date in forever,” she said. “Like two years. Haven’t gone to the movies, to dinner. Zero.”“I would love to go on a date,” she said. “You don’t think that? I’m a woman. A young woman, vibrant, and I love to have fun.”The star said the reason she’s been dateless is because no one has asked.“Seriously, all I want is a guy to take me out and make me laugh for a good hour and take my a back home,” she said. “He doesn’t even have to come up. All I want is a conversation for an hour.”But she’s not jumping into anything just yet. The “We Found Love” singer said she is waiting for someone who is “ballsy enough to deal with me.”Rihanna: I Have Not Been On a Date in Forever | Rihanna : Just JaredQuote:“I have not been on a date in forever,” Ri told the mag. “Like two years. Haven’t gone to the movies, to dinner. Zero. I would love to go on a date. You don’t think that? I’m a woman. A young woman, vibrant, and I love to have fun. And I have too many vaginas around me at this point.”

Nicki Minaj — Bitchy to Mariah Carey For Years

Nicki MInaj
Bitchy to Mariah
For Years
Nicki Minaj was supremely disrespectful to Mariah Carey 2 years before she exploded on the set of "American Idol" this week ... TMZ has learned.

Nicki and Mariah teamed up in 2010 for a music video -- "Up Out My Face."  Nicki wasn't nearly as big at the time -- Mariah was, and we're told she felt like she was helping launch Nicki's career.

B. Scott, who's big on the Internet, appeared in the video.  He tells TMZ ... "Mariah went out of her way to be nice to Nicki and make her comfortable."  But Scott says Nicki was a raving bitch, "making faces at her [Mariah] laced with rude comments under her breath." 

Scott says he blew the whistle on Nicki by giving Mariah the low down.  Scott says Mariah decided not to confront Nicki and acted as if nothing had happened.

A source close to Nicki tells TMZ ... Scott is a liar because, "He works as Mariah's stunt double and of course he would say things like that.  He's worked for her for years."

Scott says he stayed in touch with Mariah and spoke with her Thursday night.  Mariah says she wants to bury the hatchet with Nicki on "A.I." and focus on the contestants. 

Good luck with that.

Limbo Follow-Up Project 2 is ‘At Least 2 Years Away’

Limbo developer PlayDead’s second game isn’t coming any time soon. In an interview with IGN, game director Arnt Jensen said that Project 2 is “at least two years away” and that PlayDead is taking the time it needs to get it right.

“We took a lot of financial risk to release Limbo only when we felt it was ready and we are prepared to do so again,” Jensen said. According to PlayDead boss Dino Patti, while the developer acknowledges that financial risk, it isn’t something that impacts PlayDead’s actions. “Money is never the primary factor when we make decisions,” Patti told IGN.

While Project 2 won’t be available in the near future, when it does go on sale it won’t be hard to release on multiple platforms. According to PlayDead, the game is built on the Unity engine, which allows it to be extremely flexible as far as porting. Does this mean the game will also be available for next-gen systems? “We always want as many people as possible to play and Unity makes it easy to come out on different platforms,” Jensen said. “With our own technology, we spent a lot of time and money porting Limbo. With Unity this will be easier.”

This image is all we've seen of Project 2 so far.

As the codename implies, Project 2 is PlayDead’s second game, following the successful Limbo, which sold more than one million copies worldwide. While we don’t know much about the game so far, a listing for Project 2 on the Danish government’s website last month revealed that the game is a “puzzle platform/adventure” and is listed as coming to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC and Mac.

According to a description in that listing, Project 2 "tells the story of a boy's struggle against evil forces trying to take over the world through questionable experiments on human bodies." Few details are available, but in the past Patti said that Project 2 is “more crazy” than Limbo as well as “more 3D than you would think,” and that it’s “more weird” than Limbo in “many ways.”

Despite that comment, Jensen noted that some elements from Project 2 may come from ideas cut from Limbo. "We always experiment with ideas," he said. "Many ideas were cut [from Limbo], right up until the very end. We're still working with some of the ideas that didn't make it into Limbo."

Keep checking back to IGN for more information on PlayDead’s Project 2 as it’s released. For more information about the Unity engine’s scalable possibilities, check out our rundown of Unity’s possibilities.

After Years Of Beef Prodigy And Keith Murray Seen Photographed Together

Hiphop beef that goes back to the mid-90s, but Busta Rhymes recently took a photograph with Keith Murray and Prodigy.

Prodigy and Keith Murray have had a feud dating back as far as 1995, collaborating on the LL Cool J single “I Shot Ya Remix.” Soon after the track was released Keith Murray assaulted Prodigy in a New York nightclub. While both have history together by dissing each other in interviews for the last 17 years and on songs, they have both reconciled.

On the early morning of June 17, Busta Rhymes was recently photographed with both New York emcees and Prodigy acknowledged the photo via Twitter.

In the other hand, Keith Murray has yet to speak of the matter. In 2007, Keith Murray commented on an interview saying, “We ain’t really dissing records. He said something in a record, but I made a record . But nah, it ain’t no beef with Prodigy. That’s dead and old.” A year after the interview Prodigy took verbal shots at Murry, which revived the conflict once again.

On July 3, New York emcee, Prodigy, is getting ready to release H.N.I.C. 3 so start marking your calenders. While Murray released a project with Canibus, The Undergods just last year.

Photo Source:rapradar.com