Apple launches e-textbook tools with new iBooks

Apple aims to drive the use of electronic textbooks in the classroom by making it easier for publishers to create interactive titles.

The company has announced a range of new tools and services which it claims will "reinvent the textbook".
Leading names in educational resources are involved, including the world's biggest, UK-based Pearson Publishing.

Apple will compete with existing offerings from Amazon's Kindle and Barnes and Noble's Nook device.
Roger Rosner, Apple's vice president of productivity applications, demonstrated the books, some of which are now available to download, at an event in New York.

Also on display was iBooks Author, a free program that will allow educators and authors to make their own interactive books for the iPad.

Apple has also said it has enhanced iTunes U - the educational section of its iTunes store - to allow a wider breadth of university level resources.
'Huge challenge'
The company's senior vice-president, Philip Schiller, said books aimed at high school students would be priced at $14.99 (£10) or below.

Louise Robinson, president of the Girls' Schools Association, said e-textbooks could bring education to life "in a way we've not had before".

"Having movies and videos embedded; being able to search; look up a glossary; write your own notes and then going to exam questions... just tying it all together on one device is a magical experience I think for the the children."

However, she warned that UK schools were still some way from being able to fully utilise such technologies.
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UK inflation rate falls to 4.2% in December

Inflation fell sharply in December on
the back of lower fuel and clothing prices.
Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation in the UK fell to 4.2% in December,
down from 4.8% in November, according to the Office for National Statistics
(ONS).
Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation - including mortgage interest payments -
fell to 4.8% from 5.2%.
It backs Bank of England predictions that inflation will be 2% by late
2012.

The drop in the CPI rate was the biggest monthly fall since April 2009, and
the lowest rate since June 2011.
The figures reflected a 2.8% drop in the price of clothing and footwear as
retailers cut prices to attract customers in the run-up to Christmas.
Fuel prices fell 0.6% on the month, although this month's gas and electricity
cuts by the main suppliers have yet to take effect.
However, food prices rose by 1.4%, despite recent fierce competition between
the main supermarket chains.

Nanban (vijay) Tamil Film review

Release date: 13 January 2012
Running time: 188 mins
Director: S. Shankar
Starring: Vijay, Jeeva, Srikanth, Ileana D'Cruz, Sathyan,
Sathyaraj

Vijay leads an all-star cast in this Tamil remake of the Bollywood comedy
blockbuster '3 Idiots'.

Venkatramakrishnan (Srikanth), Sevalkodi Senthil (Jeeva) and Panchavan
Parivendan (Vijay) are a trio of engineering students who share a room.
Venkatramakrishnan is studying not because engineering is his vocation, but to
appease his father. Sevalkodi Senthil wants to get his family out of poverty.
Panchavan Parivendan has a genuine passion for the subject and considerable
skill at problem solving.

Unfortunately, this brings him into conflict with the pompous dean, Virumandi Santhanam, aka Virus (Sathyaraj). Matters are further complicated when he falls for Virus's daughter, Riya (Ileana D'Cruz). Adapted from Chetan Bhagrat's bestseller 'Five Point Someone' and told in the form of a series of flashbacks from the present day, '3 Idiots' was a Bollywood box office
record-breaker back in 2009. This Tamil remake from the director of 'Enthiran'
recaptures its magic for a new audience with an impressive ensemble cast.

Screenplay: S. Shankar, Madhan Karky
You should see it because: This is big-hearted, hugely
enjoyable fun with a great cast and a proven track record.

Seagate & Western Digital cut hard-drive warranties

On Friday, both companies confirmed the move, which they had previously communicated to their distributors. Seagate is reducing warranties to as short as one year, while Western Digital will now guarantee its Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives for two years, as opposed to three.
"Seagate is standardising its warranty terms to be more consistent with those commonly applied throughout the consumer electronics and technology industries," the company said in a statement.

"The new warranty periods apply to some of Seagate's internal hard drives designed for laptops, desktops and consumer electronics devices. There is no warranty change to mission-critical enterprise drives or Seagate-branded external solutions," it added.

Western Digital is buying Hitachi Global Storage Technologies — one of its main competitors — while Seagate recently acquired Samsung's disk-drive division. With this consolidation, the hard-drive industry is increasingly led by its two key players: Seagate and Western Digital.
'Reduced competition'
"The bottom line is that this is the result of reduced competitive pressure in the market place," Daniel Bizo, a research analyst in IDC's European Storage Group, told ZDNet UK. "Basically, what you see is the increased concentration of players and market shares... Changing the warranty enables them to instantly increase their top line [profits]."

"This is something they can get away with because there is reduced competition," he added.
Though Western Digital's manufacturing capacity took a huge hit from Thailand's severe floods, a spokesman for the company said the warranty changes are independent of its recovery from the disaster.

However, Bizo believes the loss in profits from the flooding could have put pressure on the company to cut costs. "These manufacturers — they were hit hard by the floods, and because they are publicly traded, they have massive pressure on them to recover lost profits," he said. "Getting back the warranty is going to help your top line and in the long run lower your costs — so it's a double win for them."

New warranties
Western Digital's new warranties take effect from 2 January, while Seagate's come in on 31 December. For Western Digital, only the Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue models are affected.

For Seagate, its nearline drives now have warranty periods of three years, down from five years. Its desktop drives now have one year of protection, apart from the Barracuda XT series, which has gone down from five years to three years. Laptop drives, some of which carried five-year guarantees, are now protected for a year, apart from the Momentus XT, which has three years of protection. Drives for consumer electronics devices now have a two-year warranty, compared with as much as five years previously.

Bizo noted that hard-disk drives, being highly mechanical, have a limited lifetime depending on their workloads and temperatures. For enterprises, a change in warranty terms could have a significant impact, he said.

"In the case of bigger installations with storage arrays using hundreds or thousands of disks, you can have an issue every couple of weeks," he said. "If those pieces are failing beyond their warranty, that means substantial replacement cost."

Over a quarter of UK Internets watching TV online

UK consumers are increasingly seeing the Internet as a resource for obtaining all manner of goods and services, according to the latest market survey by communications regulator Ofcom.

The survey found that more than a quarter (27%) of UK Internet users watch TV online every week, an increase of three percentage points from one year earlier, and higher than any of the other countries surveyed (France, Germany, Italy, US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Poland, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Brazil, Russia, India and China).

The UK also saw the largest growth in digital video recorder (DVR) take-up out of the countries surveyed, with over a third (36%) of homes now owning a DVR - a four percentage increase from 2009.

Among the six countries surveyed, the UK is now second only to the US in terms of DVR ownership.Overall TV viewing in the UK increased by 7.6% in 2010 compared to 2009, with the average person watching just over four hours of TV per day (242 minutes).

This was the highest year-on-year increase out of all the countries surveyed, and 31 minutes more than the average of 211 minutes per person.Despite the economic downturn, communications revenues were found to have increased across all 17 countries covered in the report last year, with the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) generating the strongest growth.

Total retail telecoms revenues generated in the 17 countries surveyed reached GB£ 594bn in 2010, up 1.9% year-on-year, while TV revenues increased 7.7% by the same comparison to reach GB£ 239bn.

The UK's communications regulator used its latest market report to talk up the country's broadband scene, stating that overall availability of high-speed fixed broadband in the UK compares favourably to other European countries. By June 2011, 59% of UK households had access to Virgin Media's fibre network or BT's super-fast service.

However, actual take-up of high-speed services by UK households remains low: just 4% of UK households were subscribing to super-fast broadband services in June 2011, compared to 40% in Japan and 10% in the US.

This is however higher than Germany (3%), Spain (2.2%) and Italy (1.5%).Super-fast mobile broadband services based on LTE technology are expected to launch in the UK in 2013, following the 4G spectrum auction in the second half of 2012. Some countries such as Sweden have however already launched 4G services, offering speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

Smartphone ownership nearly doubled in the UK between February 2010 and August 2011, from 24% to 46%, and take-up of these devices was higher in the UK than among the other European Countries surveyed (France: 35 per cent, Germany: 32 per cent, Italy: 40 per cent and Spain: 45 per cent). Nearly half (46%) of UK Internet users employed their phones to go online in October 2011, according to the report - a higher proportion than all the other countries surveyed.

A quarter of UK mobile users also accessed new content on their mobiles - a "significantly higher" proportion than in other European countries, due in part to higher smartphone take-up, and the greater likelihood of UK newspapers to have mobile-specific websites.The communications watchdog also gave itself a glowing report for the current price of communications services in the UK.

The cheapest price for a typical family "basket" of communications services (consisting of a fixed-line phone with high use, four mobile phones with varying use, a fixed broadband connection and a basic pay TV subscription) available to consumers in the UK was found to be GB£ 114 (US$ 177) per month, second only to France (GB£ 79). Prices for this basket in the UK increased by 10 per cent between 2010 and 2011, due largely to increases in the prices of the low-use mobile phone services.

Social networking sites proved a predictable hit in the latest market report, with over three-quarters of consumers in the markets surveyed reporting that they have visited a social networking site, and the majority saying that they visit on a daily basis. This trend is however much higher among 18-24 year olds.

Social networking sites were found to be most popular in Italy, with 91% of Italian respondents stating they have visited a social networking site and a quarter visiting over five times a day, compared to 79% of UK respondents having ever visited, and one in five visiting over five times a day.UK consumers are believed to be more likely to access social networking on a mobile phone than other countries, with 43% of those with social network profiles saying they do so, compared to just 30% in the US.

Italian social networkers were found to have the most "friends" with 216, compared to 198 for US social networkers, 168 for Brits, 137 for Germans and 108 for the French.Finally, Ofcom found that eight in ten UK Internet users reported that they had ordered goods or services online in 2010 - higher than any other European country, with just 27% of consumers in Italy claiming to have done so.

UK internet users were also more likely to visit retail websites online than other countries, with nine in ten (89 per cent) claiming to do so in 2011.

Apple launches iTunes Match service in the UK

The cloud system allows users to pay a fee and have their music libraries scanned by Apple, who then replace songs with higher quality versions which can be accessed from other Apple devices such as iPods.

The service, which will seemingly allow Apple to make a profit from illegal downloads, was launched in the US in November but was only made available in the UK yesterday (December 15). Users must pay £21.99 per year to use iTunes Match, but in return will be able to replace any illicit downloads or songs ripped from CDs with better quality tracks.

Figures within the music industry have welcome the launch, with Universal Music UK director of digital music Paul Smernicki telling the BBC:

Explaining why Apple had been able to launch the service and gain permission from record labels so quickly, meanwhile,

independent digital analyst Mark Mulligan said:

"The reason why this can happen is because Apple essentially owns the music industry’s most valuable customers – the ones spending the lion’s share in the digital marketplace."The major record labels are more willing to do things in Apple’s ecosystem than they would elsewhere.

"In November this year, The Who's Peter Townshend described Apple as a "digital vampire". The guitarist claimed that the technology giant was "destroying copyright as we know it" and was damaging the growth of new music.