Target CEO steps down in aftermath of customer data breach
The fallout from Target’s massive customer data breach continues: following the departure of the retailer’s chief information officer in March, CEO Gregg Steinhafel has stepped down. The executive feels he’s “personally accountable” for the lax security that let the breach happen, and is bowing out after “extensive discussions” with the board of directors. He’ll hang on as an advisor while Target looks for a replacement, and CFO John Mulligan will run the company in the interim.
In his resignation letter, Steinhafel says that it’s the “right time” for him to leave. The store chain has passed “several key milestones” in bolstering security, he says, including a new CIO with expertise in protecting government data. However, the exit also comes several weeks after the firm recorded a 46 percent year-over-year drop in its holiday season profits. Target is under pressure to regain the confidence of both shareholders and shoppers, and a change in CEOs just might provide the reassurances needed to improve the company’s bottom line.
[Image credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images]
Filed under: Internet
Source: Target
Chairman tries to boost confidence in Acer as he slips out the back
Six months ago, the co-founder of Acer stepped out of retirement to take up the positions of Chairman and CEO, with the intention of turning the embattled PC maker’s fortunes around. Stan Shih now claims that he’s succeeded in this mission, and that people’s confidence in the company should be restored by the end of 2014, with a full-fledged “return to glory” to be expected within three years. He won’t be sticking around to see if any of that happens, however: The 69-year-old has already handed over the chief exec’s reins (twice), and now he’s decided to give up the chairmanship too. As of June, he’ll retreat to the relative obscurity of Acer’s cloud department. He’ll oversee the company’s effort to make money from its “Build Your Own Cloud” service, based on the idea that customers may want to store their data centrally but privately, rather than on someone else’s servers. Ultimately, though, Acer’s future still rests on its hardware, and its most recent products — the Switch 10 and Iconia Tab 7 — look a lot like business as usual.
[Image credit: CEIBS]
Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, Acer
Via: PC Advisor (IDG)
Source: PC Advisor (IDG)
WSJ: HTC begins outsourcing production
HTC has started calling on other companies to help build some of its products, reports the Wall Street Journal. Alleged, HTC has turned to Compal (Taiwan) and Wingtech (China) to manufacture its Desire family of phones. Designed to help cut costs, the move is likely a result of HTC’s Chairwoman Cher Wang’s more active involvement. HTC will continue producing the One line of smartphones in-house.
WSJ (subscription required)
The post WSJ: HTC begins outsourcing production appeared first on AndroidGuys.
The Crease Icon Pack joins Joshua Masih’s fold, Literally
Our good friend and icon designer, Joshua Masih, continues to roll with his repertoire of high quality icon packs. Following in the wake of his successful icon packs, Faint (review here) and DAB (review here), comes Crease. The premise for the Crease icon pack is very simple; putting a horizontal line through all the icons and giving the bottom half a bit of shading to give the appearance of a more 3D look, and I have to say the icons look pretty great all lined up on your homescreen.
The Crease icon pack was only released a few days ago and features over 800 icons and 22 matching wallpapers, a dashboard app and a designer who is happy to respond to your icon requests. Custom launcher support is all there as expected and the pack is currently going for $2.01 USD; if you’re interested in picking the pack up, Play Store links can be found down below. And of course, be sure to circle Joshua on Google+ as he often teases his upcoming packs and updates there.
What do you think about the Crease icon pack? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Icons: Crease Icon Pack
Price: $2.01
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Cash-rich Nokia invests $100 million to boost connected car tech
Despite a huge influx of Microsoft dollars, Nokia still has to make a living in its new handset-free order and it looks set to expand one of its most profitable apps: Here. It just launched a $100 million connected car endeavor through the Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) fund to invest in technological innovations around travel and mapping. The purpose is to “grow the ecosystem around Here’s mapping and location products” for cars by investing in companies developing such tech. Now that it’s no longer wedded to Windows Phone, it’s also pushing for native Android and iOS apps, judging by some LinkedIn ads sniffed out by NPU. One seeks iOS and Android developers to produce “industry leading mobile SDKs,” while the other is looking for Here Android developers for crowd mapping. We imagine Microsoft will remain a steady customer for Here and other Nokia apps, which are some of the best on WP8. And giving Android and iOS users a solid mapping alternative can’t hurt either.
Filed under: Cellphones, Transportation, Software, Mobile, Nokia
Via: PhoneArena
Source: Nokia, Nokia (Linkedin) (1), (2)
Laptop mode finally returning to the ASUS PadFone line
When we last hung out with ASUS CEO Jerry Shen, the exec expressed his support for bringing back the keyboard dock to the PadFones, which would mean you’d get three form factors with one product: a phone, a tablet and a laptop. Now, we have a leak confirming that this is definitely in the works. Courtesy of an FCC document dug up by our friends at Mobile Geeks, we’re looking at an “ASUS Mobile Dock Keyboard” (PF-06 or “TransBoard”) which, for a change, uses Bluetooth instead of a physical docking interface.
Judging by the above blurry photo plus its matching 25cm width, the dock appears to be designed for (and lab-tested with) the upcoming PadFone X for AT&T. However, the lack of locking mechanism suggests it might accommodate other similarly-sized PadFone Station tablets as well, though there’s no telling how secure the fit would be.
More interestingly, it appears that for the sake of keeping the dock lightweight, ASUS has opted to leave the bulky battery out, meaning you won’t be able to charge up the phone and tablet with the dock. Instead, you’ll only find a tiny 450mAh cell that powers the Bluetooth radio plus the multi-touch trackpad, and you’ll need to charge it up separately via the dock’s micro-USB port. And of course, there’s no SD slot here, so you’ll need to rely on USB OTG to plug in a memory card.
Despite some missing features compared to the original keyboard dock, we’re certain that this is still music to the ears of PadFone fans. We should hear more at Computex early next month, so stay tuned.
Filed under: Tablets, Mobile, ASUS
Via: Mobile Geeks
Source: FCC
Oculus fires back at IP theft claims: ‘Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus,’ never made claims pre-Facebook purchase
When word came out last week that Oculus VR chief technology officer John Carmack was being accused by his former employer of stealing intellectual property for use in his new gig, the nascent Facebook subsidiary only issue a cursory statement: “It’s unfortunate, but when there’s this type of transaction, people come out of the woodwork with ridiculous and absurd claims. We intend to vigorously defend Oculus and its investors to the fullest extent.” The company’s expanding on that statement today, and pushing back on the claims made by Zenimax.
“We are disappointed but not surprised by Zenimax’s actions and we will prove that all of its claims are false,” the statement from Oculus reads. The company then lays out a list of refutations to Zenimax’s claims. Some highlights:
- There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products.
- Zenimax did not pursue claims against Oculus for IP or technology, Zenimax has never contributed any IP or technology to Oculus, and only after the Facebook deal was announced has Zenimax now made these claims through its lawyers.
Further, Oculus’ statements outs some interesting details about the history of Zenimax working with Palmer Luckey on VR in the past few years. For instance, Oculus claims that, “A key reason that John permanently left Zenimax in August of 2013 was that Zenimax prevented John from working on VR, and stopped investing in VR games across the company.” Interestingly, though Carmack’s departure from id Software (a development studio he co-founded, now owned by Zenimax Media) was announced in August 2013, both Oculus and Zenimax danced around the terms of the arrangement. It wasn’t until November of last year that Carmack supposedly joined Oculus full-time/left id Software completely.
Folks who’ve been following the Oculus story from the beginning will remember a promised Doom 3 BFG version that was set to ship with the original Kickstarter Oculus Rift. That bonus was eventually canned, and replaced with credit on Valve’s Steam game store. According to today’s statement from Oculus, “Zenimax canceled VR support for Doom 3 BFG when Oculus refused Zenimax’s demands for a non-dilutable equity stake in Oculus.”
That last bit means, “Oculus didn’t want to give Zenimax as much of an ownership stake in Oculus as Zenimax wanted, so Zenimax pulled support for a Rift-related product.” So, arguments over money then.
One last bit that Oculus points out is that the full Oculus SDK is online (available here), and “Zenimax has never identified any ‘stolen’ code or technology” in that source. That sounds like a job for the internet! Do you folks see any code in there that stands out? Feel free to let us know!
Add items to your #AmazonCart directly from Twitter
As if you need more temptation to spend, Amazon has now made it possible to put items aside for purchase using Twitter. To start with, you need to connect your Twitter and Amazon accounts from your social settings page (you can also opt out if you’ve already done so). After that, it’s almost too easy: when Amazon tweets out a product link like the “Banana Slicer” pictured above, all you have to do is reply with #AmazonCart (#AmazonBasket in the UK) and the product will be placed into your shopping cart/basket. We presume you can add as many items as you want, but you will need to enter your Amazon account to complete the purchase. So far, we’ve confirmed that the service will be tempting you in the US and UK, but there’s no word yet of other regions. Meanwhile, check the video below for more info.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Amazon
Source: Amazon
May The 4th Be With You: Our favourite tweets from phone manufacturers on Star Wars Day
Happy Star Wars Day one and all! We hope you all had a pleasant May 4th even if you don’t see the novelty of naming a day after one of the greatest film franchises of all time. As it turns out, the Star Wars themed day is a prime catalyst for the social media teams at the largest phone manufacturers to take to Twitter and plug their devices. So we thought it would be a nice opportunity to share a few of our favourite tweets from the day.
Use the Touchless Control, Luke. #StarWarsDay #MotoX pic.twitter.com/XHgptFs1T3
— Motorola Mobility (@Motorola) May 4, 2014
We start off with good old Motorola Mobility who appears to be still going strong after being purchased from Google by Lenovo. No content to give anything away about the subject matter of the May 13th event happening in London in a week, Motorola instead chose to plug its Moto X and its very innovative Touchless Control. Want to see the Moto X successor, we do…
May the fourth be with you this #StarWarsDay pic.twitter.com/sRqdRjgZYM — HTC (@htc) May 4, 2014
Next up, we have HTC, who invoked the introductory blurb at the start of each Star Wars film. While complementing the design of their HTC One M8, HTC also cleverly refers to the onslaught of the Samsung devices as the “Galaxy Empire”. That makes the Galaxy S-line phones Stormtroopers right?
RT if the LG Force is with you #MayThe4th #GFlex pic.twitter.com/drU6SXnNNh
— LG Electronics (@LGUS) May 4, 2014
Instead of electing to advertise their big name devices like the LG G2 or LG G Pro 2, LG instead opted to return to marketing its flexible display device, the LG G Flex, in classic, broken, Yoda English. While it may be the shape of the future, the influence of the G Flex is yet to be felt in most corners of world.
Search on and see what you find—the Force is strong today. #MayThe4thBeWithYou pic.twitter.com/eFi7chAXXN
— A Googler (@google) May 4, 2014
Unlike the decidedly forced advertising of many of the manufacturers, Google instead opted to simply share a still from the iconic Star Wars lore, one that essentially sums up the entire original trilogy. There’s probably a message somewhere in Google’s tweet, but we’re content with appreciating what is probably our favourite tweet of this Star Wars Day.
What was your favourite Star Wars Day tweet/post? Let us know your opinion in the comments below. And may the Fourth be with you all.
Source: Twitter (1), (2), (3), (4)
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Apple Donates $500,000 to ‘SF Gives’ Anti-Poverty Initiative [Mac Blog]
Apple has donated $500,000 to SF Gives, an anti-poverty initiative formed by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Tipping Point CEO Daniel Lurie, reports Fortune. Apple’s contribution comes ahead of the SF Gives’ Wednesday deadline, which looks to get 20 companies to contribute $500,000 each, or $10 million in total to fund charitable programs in the Bay Area.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant joins a list of 15 corporate contributors that includes Google, LinkedIn, and Zynga. Launched in early March, SF Gives is the brainchild of Salesforce.com (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff and Daniel Lurie, CEO of the nonprofit Tipping Point.
The donation also follows a number of charitable moves made directly by Apple in the past few years, including the establishment of a donation matching program for employees which generated $2.6 million in less than a year. Since 2006, Apple has also partnered with (Product) RED to contribute a total of $70 million towards HIV/AIDS programs in Africa. Through the collaboration, Apple has sold special (RED) products, including iPhone 5s cases, iPod nanos and shuffles, iPad Smart Covers, and iPhone Bumpers.
AIVAnet 