Yahoo ad exec deflects talk about becoming CEO (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO ? The head of Yahoo's online advertising business in North America said Monday he has been too busy trying to bring in more revenue to consider whether he would be willing to become the struggling Internet company's next CEO.

Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo Inc.'s executive vice president of Americas, made his remarks during the kick-off of the Web 2.0 Summit. That's a three-day Internet conference that annually attracts prominent technology executives.

The conference got off to a rocky start with the cancellation of two of Monday's scheduled speakers.

Mark Pincus, CEO and founder of Web Zynga Inc., didn't show up because he didn't want to risk saying anything that might rile government regulators and complicate the company's efforts to raise $1 billion in an initial public offering of stock that has been in the works for nearly four months. Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellini cancelled because he wasn't feeling well.

Levinsohn's appearance held intrigue because of the drama swirling around Yahoo since its board fired Carol Bartz as CEO last month. Tim Morse, Yahoo's chief financial officer, is temporarily running the company while the board undergoes a strategic review. The directors are evaluating whether it makes sense to hire a permanent CEO or sell Yahoo in parts or in its entirety.

If Yahoo decides to hire from within, Levinsohn will likely be a leading candidate. After making his mark running News Corp.'s online operations under media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Levinson spent several years running a digital media investment fund. Bartz lured Levinsohn to Yahoo 11 months ago.

In response to a question in his Monday appearance, Levinsohn said he is focusing more on reviving Yahoo's revenue growth than a possible promotion.

"I have an incredible job now," he said. "This is the best job I've ever had."

Levinsohn deflected a question about the possibility of Yahoo being sold. In recent weeks, there has been repeated speculation that the company might be sold to an assortment of buyout firms that prey upon troubled companies. Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company of which Yahoo owns a 43 percent stake, has expressed interest if it can line up the financing for a deal that would likely require a bid of more than $20 billion. Microsoft Corp., which offered to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion in 2008 before withdrawing the bid, also has been mentioned as a possible suitor.

The takeover talk will hang over Yahoo's schedule release of its third-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon. The results are expected to show Yahoo's revenue is still declining as online advertisers spend more money with Internet search leader Google Inc. and Facebook's steadily growing social network.

Despite the challenges facing Yahoo, Levinsohn said he remains "incredibly bullish" on the company.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111018/ap_on_hi_te/us_yahoo_web_summit

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iPhone 4S: Siri is Impressive, But Still a Work in Progress [REVIEW] (Mashable)

Apple is bringing speech recognition to the masses with its new iPhone 4S, equipped with an intelligent assistant named Siri. It's a major differentiator for the new iPhone, setting it apart from its predecessors. I've been using speech recognition software for the past 8 years, so I was eager to take this enhanced version of Siri for a spin. Here's my review. Siri is not new. It started its life as an experiment funded by DARPA, said to be the largest artificial intelligence project to date. Next, Siri, with the same Nuance speech recognition tech built in that also powers the application I've been using for years, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, was first available as a free app on the iPhone in February, 2010. Then Apple bought Siri in April of 2010 and decided to incorporate it into its new iPhone 4S, breaking the old Siri app on other iPhones (unless you want to perform a crude hack).

[More from Mashable: Robots Play Ping-Pong: The End is Near [VIDEO]]

So now Siri is baked into every iPhone 4S, and not available elsewhere. Siri has come a long way since it was first introduced as a less-accurate and somewhat incomplete iPhone app. Now it's better integrated into iOS 5, and my immediate impression is that it's more accurate than it's ever been. Even in a noisy environment inside a car going 60 miles an hour, it can still understand most of what you're saying if you hold the iPhone up to your ear. Its speech recognition isn't perfect, and some of its errors are laughable, but in a quiet environment its accuracy is nearly equal to that of the desktop version of NaturallySpeaking running on extremely powerful processors.

Its integration into the iPhone 4S's iOS 5 software makes it convenient to use. You press and hold the iPhone 4S's Home button, and it springs to life, sounding a short beep to signal for you to begin speaking. You can use it in this speakerphone mode, or if the iPhone 4S is turned on, you can simply raise the handset to your ear (a necessity when riding in a noisy vehicle) and the phone's proximity sensor activates Siri, usually prompting you to begin speaking (inexplicably, sometimes it doesn't respond).

[More from Mashable: Top 10 Tech This Week [PICS]]

?Only a company with the chutzpah of Apple would have the courage to try something like this. But Siri works just barely well enough for Apple to pull it off, bolstered by the iPhone 4S's faster processor and better camera."

That odd non-working tendency must be why Apple is still calling Siri "beta." The company reassures users that Siri will be continuously improved, adding that the software learns how you speak as you go and will perform more accurate recognition as it learns your way of speaking. Still, loading beta software into a new piece of iPhone hardware is a thin thread on which to differentiate this new product. Only a company with the chutzpah of Apple would have the courage to try something like this. But Siri works just barely well enough for Apple to pull it off, bolstered by the iPhone 4S's faster processor and better camera (among what Apple boasts as 197 other incremental improvements), all doing their part to strengthen the lure of this updated iPhone.

Over the 48 hours I've been using Siri, it's hard to tell if it's actually improving its speech recognition, but as it stands, it's just good enough to be fun to use. I especially like the way you can almost carry on a conversation with it. For example, you can ask it, "How's the weather in New York today?" It will answer by showing you the iPhone's weather app with New York's data displayed. Then, if you ask it, "Where are the good Italian restaurants there?," Siri responds by finding 24 Italian restaurants in New York, sorted by rating. It knows you're still talking about New York. Clever.

As you can read in our posts about Siri, it does bring a slight attitude along with it, which I find refreshing. Other times, it has hilarious misunderstandings, such as when I asked it yesterday to "Call me an ambulance," and it responded, "From now on, I'll call you 'an ambulance'. Okay?" I was disappointed to hear Siri's voice, which still sounds way too robotic for my taste. I was thinking that somehow, now that Apple owns the app, it would gussy it up to sound more like GPS units do, or like the mellifluous yet mutinous HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. But I suspect that's still way off in the future. Instead, there are some oddities in its stilted pronunciation, such as the way Siri says the word "restaurant," speaking with a drawl that sounds like it's straight out of my native Southern U.S.: "Resta-runt." Grandma, is that you?

Among its myriad capabilities, of course Siri can help you place phone calls with aplomb, where all you have to do is speak the name of anyone in your Contacts app, and it quickly connects you (something that's been possible for years with much lesser cellphones). Beyond that, it can also help you speak an email and turn it into text, where it walks you through by asking who you're sending it to, the subject line and so forth. However, it's not too adept at breaking out separate paragraphs of text, even if I spoke to it the way I do with NaturallySpeaking, specifying things such as "new paragraph." Although the email function could be useful for creating short emails while driving (not recommended), it still has some polishing to do before it's truly useful for sending emails solely by speech.

Some of its capabilities go deeply into science fiction territory, such as pushing and holding the Home button, and then telling it to set a timer for 15 minutes. I especially like telling it to set an alarm, asking it directions, or asking it to launch a playlist in iTunes. I was disappointed to see that it wasn't able to interact with Twitter, but I found a workaround for that, so that problem is solved already. Still, Apple should have made that capability available from the beginning, and if the company follows through on its promise, we will soon see a lot more interaction with various iOS apps.

Siri on the iPhone 4S still feels like a work in progress. I think it could have used another few months of development before it was released to push it well beyond gimmick territory. But Apple was already later than usual in its product cycle with this iPhone 4S, so might have been compelled to release it early. Even so, Siri as it stands now gives us a hint at what's to come, and the future looks bright.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20111016/tc_mashable/iphone_4s_siri_is_impressive_but_still_a_work_in_progress_review

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Sony Reader PRS-T1 hacked to expose Android, run other e-reader apps (video)

Sony PRS-T1
We knew that lurking under the e-ink screen gracing the front of Sony's PRS-T1 reader was some version of Android. What was unclear, was whether or not we'd ever be able to actually get a peek under its highly customized skin and a chance to start poking its open-source innards. Well, thanks to one intrepid hacker, we're almost there. YouTube user vladboroda has managed to install AWD.Launcher and a host of other apps on the Reader and actually got some of them up and running. You won't be able to play Angry Birds on its 6-inch touchscreen (yet...) but it is capable of running other e-reader apps, like FBReader, and there is access to the terminal. It's not quite enough that we'd start referring to the PRS-T1 as a tablet just yet, and the hack still isn't available to the public, but work is progressing and we're sure it'll have you browsing the web and slingshotting aggravated avians in no time. Check out the video after the break.

Continue reading Sony Reader PRS-T1 hacked to expose Android, run other e-reader apps (video)

Sony Reader PRS-T1 hacked to expose Android, run other e-reader apps (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Iraq Withdrawal: U.S. Abandoning Plans To Keep Troops In Country

BAGHDAD ? The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability.

The decision ends months of hand-wringing by U.S. officials over whether to stick to a Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline that was set in 2008 or negotiate a new security agreement to ensure that gains made and more than 4,400 American military lives lost since March 2003 do not go to waste.

In recent months, Washington has been discussing with Iraqi leaders the possibility of several thousand American troops remaining to continue training Iraqi security forces.

But a senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

A senior U.S. military official confirmed the departure and said the withdrawal could allow future but limited U.S. military training missions in Iraq if requested.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Throughout the discussions, Iraqi leaders have adamantly refused to give U.S. troops immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, and the Americans have refused to stay without it. Iraq's leadership has been split on whether it wanted American forces to stay. Some argued the further training and U.S. help was vital, particularly to protect Iraq's airspace and gather security intelligence. But others have deeply opposed any American troop presence, including Shiite militiamen who have threatened attacks on any American forces who remain.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has told U.S. military officials that he does not have the votes in parliament to provide immunity to the American trainers, the U.S. military official said.

A western diplomatic official in Iraq said al-Maliki told international diplomats he will not bring the immunity issue to parliament because lawmakers will not approve it.

Iraqi lawmakers excel at last-minute agreements. But with little wiggle room on the immunity issue and the U.S. military needing to move equipment out as soon as possible, a last-minute change between now and December 31 seems almost out of the question.

Regardless of whether U.S. troops are here or not, there will be a massive American diplomatic presence.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and the State Department will have offices in Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk as well as other locations around the country where contractors will train Iraqi forces on U.S. military equipment they're purchasing.

About 5,000 security contractors and personnel will be tasked with helping protect American diplomats and facilities around the country, the State Department has said.

The U.S. Embassy will still have a handful of U.S. Marines for protection and 157 U.S. military personnel in charge of facilitating weapons sales to Iraq. Those are standard functions at most American embassies around the world and would be considered part of the regular embassy staff.

When the 2008 agreement requiring all U.S. forces leave Iraq was passed, many U.S. officials assumed it would inevitably be renegotiated so that American forces could stay longer.

The U.S. said repeatedly this year it would entertain an offer from the Iraqis to have a small force stay behind, and the Iraqis said they would like American military help. But as the year wore on and the number of American troops that Washington was suggesting could stay behind dropped, it became increasingly clear that a U.S. troop presence was not a sure thing.

The issue of legal protection for the Americans was the deal-breaker.

Iraqis are still angry over incidents such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or Haditha, when U.S. troops killed Iraqi civilians in Anbar province, and want American troops subject to Iraqi law.

American commanders don't want to risk having their forces end up in an Iraqi courtroom if they're forced to defend themselves in a still-hostile environment.

It is highly unlikely that Iraqi lawmakers would have the time to approve a U.S. troop deal even if they wanted to. The parliament is in recess on its Hajj break until Nov. 20, leaving just a few weeks for legislative action before the end of year deadline.

Going down to zero by the end of this year would allow both al-Maliki and President Barack Obama to claim victory. Obama will have fulfilled a key campaign promise to end the war and al-Maliki will have ended the American presence in Iraq and restored Iraqi sovereignty.

The Iraqi prime minister was also under intense pressure from his anti-American allies, the Sadrists, to reject any American military presence.

An advisor close to al-Maliki said the Americans suggested during negotiations that if no deal is reached in time, U.S. troops could be stationed in Kuwait.

With the U.S. military presence in Iraq currently at about 41,000 and heading down to zero, almost all of those forces will be flowing out of Iraq into Kuwait and then home or other locations.

A western expert in Iraq said it is conceivable that if the Iraqi government asks early next year for U.S. troops to return, there will be forces still in Kuwait able to come back and do the job.

But he stressed that the core problems still remain on the Iraqi side about what types of legal immunity to give the American troops and whether parliament can pass it.

__

Lara Jakes can be reached at http://twitter.com/@larajakesAP

Rebecca Santana can be reached at http://twitter.com/ruskygal

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/15/iraq-withdrawal-us-troops_n_1012661.html

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Disabled adults found captive in Philadelphia basement (Reuters)

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) ? Four mentally handicapped adults were found locked in a "very unsanitary" basement in Philadelphia, officials said.

The three men and one woman were likely victims of Social Security fraud, Philadelphia Police Sergeant Joseph Green said late on Saturday.

"They were abused physically and emotionally," he said. "This is just a horror story."

Police arrested a woman and her boyfriend allegedly responsible but said the investigation was still ongoing and no charges had been handed down.

Local officials were working with the FBI to hammer out specifics.

"They could face false imprisonment, abduction, coercion, theft. It runs the gamut," Green said.

Green said the suspect held two of the victims captive for perhaps a year or more and moved at least two of them from city to city.

"We believe she has been taking some of them with her, and there may be others we don't know about yet," Green said.

Police said the four middle-aged people were found confined in a small basement room where the building's boiler was housed. The room contained a mattress with some bedding and a flat board with a pillow.

"There were a couple water bottles but no food or anything," Green said. "There was a bucket they used to urinate in."

After they were discovered, the victims were taken for "much needed medical attention" at area hospitals, he said. They were put in the care of city health professionals who are giving them temporary residence and counseling, Green said.

(Reporting by Dave Warner, additional reporting by Eric Johnson in Chicago; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111016/us_nm/us_captives_philadelphia

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Libyan government steps up security after clashes in capital (Reuters)

TRIPOLI (Reuters) ? Libya's new government increased security in Tripoli Saturday with extra roadblocks and house-to-house searches after fighting in the capital with supporters of Muammar Gaddafi raised fears of another insurgency.

At most a few dozen pro-Gaddafi fighters appeared Friday in only a few neighborhoods of the Libyan capital that are known to be sympathetic to the deposed ruler.

But it was still the first sign of armed resistance to the National Transitional Council in Tripoli since its forces seized the city in August and ended Gaddafi's 42 years of one-man rule.

Government forces set up more roadblocks across the city, but especially in and around Abu Salim, an area of run-down apartment blocks where the clashes took place.

Pick-up trucks with heavy weapons were stationed inside the district, firing occasional volleys over the houses to make their presence felt. NTC foot soldiers searched the buildings, but there were no further clashes Saturday.

"During the war Gaddafi hid guns among the people here," said Ziyad, an NTC fighter. He said he and his comrades had found five AK-47 assault rifles hidden in a water tower on the top of one of the buildings and another two in the basement.

Residents said fighting broke out when a group of up to 50 armed men had appeared in Abu Salim, a repository of pro-Gaddafi sentiment, Friday and at least one other nearby neighborhood and chanted pro-Gaddafi slogans.

Hundreds of NTC fighters in pick-up trucks shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) raced into Abu Salim and the two sides exchanged rifle and heavy machinegun fire.

Two Gaddafi supporters and one NTC fighter were killed in the violence, NTC official Abdel Razak al Oraidi told a news conference in the capital.

TRAPPED

Since he went into hiding after rebel forces captured Tripoli on August 23, Gaddafi has released a number of audio recordings calling on loyalists to fight back.

But the former strongman has not been seen and is thought to be hiding somewhere in the vast Libyan desert.

His supporters, however, are still holding out in his hometown Sirte, on the Mediterranean coast in the center of the country, and in Bani Walid, a small town southeast of Tripoli.

Government forces kept up their bombardment of a small area in the center of Sirte Saturday with Grad multiple rocket launchers, as well as tanks and anti-aircraft guns, but there was little sign of a major push under way from the infantry.

NTC militia have besieged Sirte for weeks, only slowly tightening their grip to the point where now Gaddafi die-hards are surrounded in an area of about two sq km (a sq mile). Green flags, the banner of Gaddafi's rule, still fly over the area.

The often chaotic struggle has cost scores of lives and left thousands homeless.

The failure to seize the final Gaddafi bastions swiftly has also held up attempts by Libya's new leaders to try to build a democratic government, a process they say will begin only after Sirte is captured.

"It is taking so long because the area is crowded with buildings and there is a large number of them; between 400 to 500 Gaddafi men," said Hussein Alteir, a brigade commander in Sirte.

The main NTC field hospital said it had received one dead and 11 wounded from the fighting Saturday.

NTC officers say Gaddafi loyalists fear reprisals if they surrender -- some captured fighters have been abused.

A Medecins Sans Frontieres doctor at Sirte's Ibn Sina hospital estimated there were still some 10,000 people marooned by the fighting in the city of 75,000 residents. Many of those trapped are women and children and some are sick or injured.

Yahia Alivi, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross at the same hospital, said: "Behind the front line, we have no news of the medical situation, but given the degree of fighting and shelling, if there are civilians there, the situation would be very very dire."

The ICRC is evacuating 40 wounded from the hospital, which for a time was on the front line of the fighting in Sirte. Many of its facilities are damaged by the fighting. At the back of the hospital six corpses were left on gurneys outside.

(Additional reporting by Rania El Gamal and Tim Gaynor in Sirte, Brian Rohan in Benghazi; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111015/wl_nm/us_libya

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Apple Wins Australian Patent Salvo Against Samsung (NewsFactor)

The patent war between Apple and Samsung produced a major victory for Apple Thursday, and potentially opens a significant legal threat against Android-based devices in a variety of markets. The Federal Court of Australia issued a temporary injunction blocking Samsung from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet, thus missing the holiday season there.

Although temporary, the injunction will remain at least until the trial is completed, which is expected to be sometime next year. Since the Tab will miss the all-important holiday season, some industry observers are speculating that Samsung will skip the Australian market entirely for this product, even if it were to win the trial.

'No Coincidence'

On Friday, both companies will appear in the court to determine if a modified version of the Tab 10.1 can be sold without Apple's objections.

In a statement, Samsung said it would continue its legal fight with Apple. The company added that it was "confident" it can successfully fire back at Apple, and prove that its wireless-technology patents have been violated by the maker of the iPhone and the iPad.

Samsung is attempting to obtain a ban on Apple's new iPhone 4S in South Korea, Italy and France, as well as other markets. Apple has also won a preliminary injunction against the Tab 10.1 in Germany, based on design-related intellectual property.

In response, Apple said that "it's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and the iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging."

In the Netherlands, another front in this worldwide war, Samsung has made software changes related to photo scrolling in its Galaxy smartphones in order to avoid an injunction there, which had been requested by Apple. The ban was ordered in August, and scheduled to begin this week, but now it appears the smartphones could be on sale next week. In California, a court hearing is expected between the two companies Thursday on yet another injunction.

Android 'Killer Patents'?

Florian Mueller, who writes a software patent-news blog called Foss Patents, noted that the Australian legal victory was a posthumous score for Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. It was one of Jobs' 300 patents, on touchscreen heuristics, that was behind the injunction there.

Mueller said the relevant patents in Australia "are not tablet-specific." Rather, he said, they are "very broad and can hardly be worked around, unlike various other intellectual-property rights that Apple asserted and Samsung recently engineered around" in the Netherlands.

In fact, Mueller said, the patents are so broad that he doesn't believe any company will "be able to launch any new Android-based touchscreen product in Australia anytime soon without incurring a high risk of another interim injunction."

He said this could include any Android-based smartphone or tablet in that market and, if Apple wins the final trial, Android touchscreen mobile devices will be banned in Australia -- unless Apple settles with Google or Samsung. In addition to Samsung, Apple is also suing Motorola and HTC for comparable intellectual-property infringements.

If the validity of the Apple patents at issue in Australia is upheld in the trial, Mueller said, "those are killer patents" that Google and its Android manufacturers "must be very afraid of."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111013/bs_nf/80591

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