Apple reportedly building TV sets in Q1 for release by Q3 2012

Apple has reportedly instructed suppliers to begin “preparing materials” for the manufacturing of its new televisions sets in the first-quarter of 2012, preparing for a second or third quarter launch, Digitimes reports.

The Asian trade publication cites industry sources, adding that Apple has chosen Samsung Electronics to produce chips for its new sets, referred to in press reports as iTVs, with Sharp manufacturing and supplying the displays.

The same sources indicate that Apple will focus on 32-inch and 37-inch television sets initially, which will move away from the company’s existing set-top boxes and integrate the technology within the TV sets themselves.

Speculation surrounding a new Apple television gained momentum following the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and the subsequent release of his biography. In Walter Isaacson’s book, there is a statement from Jobs about an Apple Television where Jobs says that he had “finally cracked it.”

It is believed that Apple’s Siri technology could be fully integrated into a new television set, which “is a guaranteed product for Apple” according to a New York Times article. The television product has reportedly been being worked on at Apple for more than a year and it has been suggested that some executives were talking about the idea as far back as 2007.

Digitimes concludes its report with the suggestion that Apple could debut a new Apple TV set-top box in 2012, following a price-drop of existing models on Internet retailers.

Google’s Eric Schmidt: The Internet and mobile can “change the world”

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has spoken about how he believes technology can change the world by bringing greater information, transparency and values to Internet users across the planet.

Speaking at The Economic Club of Washington’s event yesterday, broadcast by C-Span, Schmidt opened by stating that technology, and the Internet in particular, is an enabler that can help people push themselves forward:

All of us would agree that people can search for their dreams, they should be able to archive what they really want.

Government and citizens

Schmidt spoke of the emergence of two rival systems which are being brought together by the Internet: offline institutions — such as government, politics and law — and cyberspace.

They are getting into conflict in some governments and places, as technology is empowering people in ways they have never been empowered before. You can think of this as a community of citizens and a community of governments.

As technology develops and time passes, Schmidt believes that “a new equilibrium will emerge” to serve both communities in different ways. Cyberspace, he says, will ultimately serve to keep governments more honest in many ways, while equally government will have influence on the negative things that happen in cyberspace.

Companies changing the world

Schmidt continued on to look at exactly how the Internet and leading tech companies are helping to improve live across the world, saying:

Technology is at a point where we are  seeing emergence of global scaled platforms, that are impressive in their reach, with a chance to change the world.

He specifically identified four companies — Google (of course), Apple, Facebook and Amazon — as those which have platforms that are impacting political and business systems across the world.

Construction of these systems is the probably most important business today. The combined market value of these corporations is very high, but they are just beginning. Within 10 yeas, computers will be 30 times faster…which will allow us to do amazing things.

The Google chief firmly believes that the Internet can make an unprecedented difference across the whole world:

My view, is that we should be very optimistic about all of this. The world isn’t perfect but it is going to a much safer and more informed place. The things that [the US] can bring to the world really will change a lot of these countries and lift people out of financial poverty, and information poverty.

Schmidt highlighted the captive market for these changes by pointing out that, in some countries, people are placing greater priority on having a mobile phone than getting running water at home.

Personal super computer

Speaking about the future, Schmidt is optimistic that computers and artificial intelligence will not take over the world. Instead he believes that a complimentary scenario will emerge:

Over five to ten years, human and computers will be distinguishable. Humans will still be very good at what we do — intuition, fun, entertainment, innovation — and computers will get extraordinarily good about what they are very good at, such as needle in a haystack problems and infinite memories.

Schmidt believes that the value of mobile devices is the networks of information that they are connected to, rather than the device itself:

I don’t think of this as my phone, it is my personal super computer that can answer any question that I care about in life.

Tablets and mobile devices are often referred to as points of access, and Google is continuing to invest it its network, having recently broken ground on two new data center in Asia, amongst many of its other projects.

The Top Ten Media Apps of 2011

If you have the impression that 2011 was particularly rich in news, it’s not just you.According to CNN’s MD Tony Maddox, this was “the most demanding year we can remember.”

This busy year was not only about news itself, but also media apps, which have undergone significant transformations over the last months.

1. Bambuser

According to its homepage, Bambuser lets you “share live moments from your phone or webcam” – but forget about the holiday pictures Bambuster uses to advertise itself. As we reported, Bambuser has actually become a tool for citizen journalism, and Egyptian activists have been using the service to broadcast Tahrir Square protests in real time from their mobile phones.

This goes well beyond Egypt; Bambuser now has about 1 million users worldwide, from 190 countries. Its founders are also well aware of its potential when it comes to real-time news, something they envisioned from the very beginning. Still, giving a voice to protesters doesn’t come without trouble, and the service has suffered temporary shutdowns in the Middle East.

Yet, Bambuser has also become a reliable source for traditional media outlets, as its co-founder Jonas Vig told our Middle East Editor Nancy Messieh last month in reference to Egypt:

“On the 25th of January, when Twitter was flooded with all the tweets. One of the partners we have with public broadcasters in Sweden, they couldn’t validate the news. So they turned to Bambuser, and since this is real-time, could validate that there were thousands of people in the Square. They used a Bambuser video in their traditional broadcasting as well.”

It’s a future Bambuser fully embraces; “What we want to do is to work with as many media outlets as possible,” Vig added.

➤  Bambuser, via multiple platforms

2. Shelby.tv

Shelby.tv may only be a few months old, but we’ve already written about it quite a few times; no later than today, we listed it as one of the companies that are building the future of social video.

So what does Shelby.tv do? A TechStars startup, it gathers all the videos your friends are posting on social networks, and lets you watch them very easily. Beyond simplicity, its best asset could well be its design – here’s what the iOS app looks like if you haven’t tested it yet:

How To: Recover lost contacts on an iPhone

Accidents happen and sometimes you happen to delete a contact on your phone on accident. It could happen because you’re trying to enter a new e-mail address or phone and accidentally remove a previous one.
Don’t worry too much, you can get those lost numbers back. It’s not lost forever to the ether.
1. Open iTunes on your computer.
2. Plug your iPhone in to your computer using the USB connector cable.
3. Go to “Devices” on the left-side of the iTunes window and click the iPhone tab.
4. Right-click on the iPhone icon in the “Devices” column and select “Restore from Backup”. Select one of the backup versions from the drop-down menu. Click the “Restore” button. This will restore any contacts that you may have deleted since the last time that you synced your iPhone with iTunes.
5. Eject your iPhone. Go to your contact list. Your lost contacts should be restored.
A couple of notes for you to consider for the future:
- We recommend that you occasionally make separate backups that aren’t the ones that iTunes automatically does when you sync the iPhone. iTunes replaces the previous backup each time it syncs. To ensure that you keep things that you want or as a just in case, it’s good to have different back ups. Create a separate backup by right-clicking on the iPhone under the “Devices” tab in the left column. Then select “Back Up”. You can also restore contacts manually if you sync contacts with your contact list in either Outlook or Address Book (Mac) and re-entering the info by hand.
- If you haven’t synced in a while you might have to re-download any firmware updates or apps that you have added to the iPhone since the last backup. They won’t be kept in the previous backup file.

Anonymous makes charitable donations using stolen credit card details

except that for hacking group Anonymous it appears to involve the use of other people's credit cards. The group, which appears to have recently hacked servers belonging to security think tank Stratfor, is said to be planning to donate around $1 million to various charities in the coming days.
Hacktivist collective Anonymous appears to have been making charitable donations to a number of

organizations using credit card information stolen from US-based security think tank Stratfor.
According to a Telegraph report, one of the alleged perpetrators said the hack marked the beginning of what will be a week-long series of similar attacks, with the aim of using gathered credit card data to make further Christmas donations to the tune of $1 million.
Posts on a Twitter feed linked to the group suggested it had pulled more than 200GB worth of sensitive information from Stratfor’s servers, a company that Anonymous says has the US Army, the US Air Force and the Miami Police Department among its client list.
Anonymous claimed that Stratfor had failed to encrypt any of the credit card information on its servers, which if confirmed would be hugely embarrassing for a global intelligence company. The hacker group later tweeted a link to images it said were of receipts for donations made to charity using the credit card information it had stolen.
One of the receipts bore the name Allen Barr, who up until his recent retirement had been working for the Texas Department of Banking. Barr confirmed that $700 had been transferred in a number of transactions from his bank account to several charities, without his consent.
“It was all charities, the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children,” Barr explained. “So when the credit card company called my wife she wasn’t sure whether I was just donating. It made me feel terrible. It made my wife feel terrible. We had to close the account.”
An emailed statement to members signed by Stratfor’s chief executive, George Friedman, said the company was taking steps to deal with the incident. “We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other websites. We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained,” Friedman wrote.
It’s not the first time Anonymous has hit the headlines for its hacking activities. In August, for example, it defaced the website of Syria’s Ministry of Defense in response to the government’s brutal crackdown on those protesting against its regime.

Imagining the future car of 2050

The designs of tomorrow may already be sketched out in secretive R&D labs, but the designs of 2050 are an open slate. Here’s where automotive experts and analysts imagine the humble car could take us by

It all started with a short e-mail exchange. Asked about the future car, an unnamed representative from an American automaker called the idea ridiculous. By 2050, we’ll all be living on another planet flying around in jetpacks, he joked. Cars might not even exist. Yet, as everyone who studies technology knows, there are fits and starts, major milestones and minor setbacks, on the road to the future. Alan Keys said the only way to predict the future is to invent it, and invention requires a massive R&D budget.
Sure, thirty-eight years is a long time. No one could have predicted the iPhone back in the mid-70s, with apps that show a pop-up display using augmented reality or easy access to every song on Spotify. Yet, in predicting the future car, there is also a long history of things staying the same: the combustible engine, seat belts that work about the same way as they have for decades, four tires and a steering wheel. The future car of 2050 may still operate about the same way as it does today. To predict what might happen over the next three decades, Digital Trends asked well-known auto analysts, futurists, and other experts to offer their opinion on what the car in your garage might look like (and do) in 2050.

Completely autonomous driving

We already know that Google has tested autonomous vehicles in northern California. In a widely reported incident, one of the Toyota Priuses was actually in a fender bender, although Google claims the car was being driven by a human at the time. The idea makes perfect sense, though: The computer in a car can react faster and use more diagnostic data than a human ever could. When a deer jumps out on the road, a Lexus GX 460 can use powerful forward-facing sensors to track the object, scan to see if you are paying attention (based on the angle of your face and by tracking your eyes and mouth), alert you with a chime, and even brake automatically in a split second – much faster than a human could.
Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst at Gartner, says the next stepis for the car to not just drive

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