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Cover via AmazonThe Guinness Book of World Records has honored the not only Apple’s iPhone 4 but also several gaming apps in its App Store and recording their out of the ordinary performance and success. iPhone 4 has been credited as the fastest-growing gaming system of the world, along with several other record breaking gaming apps and App Store itself have set records too. Considering the record of iPhone 4 to be the fastest-growing gaming system of the world, this titled was presented to iPhone on considering its exceptional 1.5 million sales on the first launch day, which is a very huge number even in comparison with other gaming systems. Guinness compared its unparallel success, mentioning that Sony’s PSP (PlayStation Portable) sold just 200,000 units on its day one, whereas it was not until a complete week sales that Nintendo DS had sold 500,000 consoles. Gaz Deaves. The gaming editor for Guinness' notified that "The release of the iPhone has not just changed the mobile industry, but the video game world too."
Image via WikipediaThe monopoly of Microsoft in single handedly leading the vast market of computing platforms is not forsaken by its rivals. The still has enough to offer as long as the rivals have the audacity to compete and replace the monopoly of replacing Windows. In a similar such attempt Google has announced its new Chromebooks in its I/O conferences this week. Chromebooks will be made available for online orders from 15th of June, 2011 in all major countries including U.S., U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain. 
Image via WikipediaChromebooks are told to be new kinds of laptops, which will now be powered by Google's Chromium, rather than Microsoft Windows, which rather an open-source browser-based operating system. The manufacturing of these laptops is trusted in the hands of Samsung and Acer, pricing these laptops at a retail amount of $499 with the 3G capability, and $429 with Wi-Fi-only products. These will be made be available to buy from both Best Buy and Amazon.com. Moreover, users will also be allowed to "rent" these Chromebooks from mentioned retailers. Businesses renting the Chromebooks will be bound to pay $28 per month, as the schools have concession down to the price of $20 per month. The up gradation of the software in the device will be constant and automatic, while the hardware will be warranted to be replacement automatically with any failures or newer versions coming in the future.
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The shares of Yahoo! saw a slight decline after the cross-statements passed between the Alibaba Group, a Chinese e-commerce giant and the California Internet company Yahoo!, on the Friday. Yahoo! is one of the largest share holders of the AliBaba Group and in consequences of its anxiety with AliBaba Group, its fell upto 3.61 percent closing at a rate of $16.55, as reported by Wall Street on Friday. WSJ further elaborated that the downfall in the Yahoo! stock began even before Friday, as the announcement of Alibaba acquiring its own online payment business, Alipay, on Wednesday. 
Image via CrunchBaseRetaliating to the news and affects, Yahoo! file an official complaint on Tuesday to the US Securities and Exchange Commission regarding this ownership of Alipay, which largely shifts the charge of the Chinese company towards the owner of Alibaba, C.E.O. Jack Ma. In this complaint Yahoo! has appealed that it was not consulted regarding this new acquisition of Alipay, and went on blaming that this step has been taken without the approval of Alibaba's board of directors or shareholders. Yahoo! pointed out that even though this step was finalized by the company in August, Yahoo! and the second largest stakeholder, Japan's Softbank, were informed later in March, without any consultation of their opinion.
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The huge acquisition deal Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion, is being seen as to a major step towards the development of videoconferencing market, though this however narrows the market of video technology providers, like Polycom and Logitech. The videoconferencing equipment market was already having a bumpy ride since the expansion of Skype and other video applications, which do not require referring the device making market anymore. Now the pressure on the videoconferencing devices makers has even double, portrays Jeffrey Mann, an analyst from Gartner. Many other analysts have also shown the same concern, as Mann explained that "Some of the more narrowly focused companies will likely struggle." It is being said that comapnie like Polycom and Logitech will be the very first culprits after the acquisition of Skype, consequently taking the company toward being an enterprise. On the other hand, it will make space for larger companies of the market, like Cisco and Hewlett-Packard to benefit from it, having a larger range of services to offer. The C.E.O. of Cisco Systems said that "I think we're well positioned here, but if you haven't got good, big competitors and good start-ups, you're in the wrong market."
Image via WikipediaThe world’s largest payment system, Visa Inc., is now announcing its new venture as it discloses that it will soon be launching a digital wallet, which will immensely facilitate the users will making online payments. Moreover it will also make it very easier for the cellphone users to make payments, rather than using their traditional cards. It was announced on Wednesday that Visa Inc. will be collaborating with sever major banks of not only the U.S. but also international banks in this new project. Some of the initial partners, already on board with this digital wallet project, are named to be US Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, Regions Financial, BB&T Corp, Toronto Dominion's TD Bank and the U.S. arm of Barclays PLC. This "digital wallet" will have the facility to store the credit and debit card account information of the customers of any bank, both for Visa cards and other cards. Visa said that the users can then use this wallet for making payments in online stores or on other stores too. Further, it will be adviced to all merchants to have a "one-click" button on their websites for the potential customers to use the Visa digital wallets easily and make the transactions quickly. It said that users will be able to buy things after just that one-click rather than entering all the sophisticated information manually each time they make an online purchase.
Image via CrunchBaseBBC International reported on this Friday that the Japanese doctors are appreciating the reliable services of Twitter in their time of need; they called it “an excellent system” which let them communicate with their needy patients and spread awareness, both quickly and easily, about where to can obtain their vital medication from. This appreciation note by the doctors was published in The Lancet, considered to be world’s largest medical journals. In the aftermath of the earthquake which hit Japan on 11th March, 2011, almost all the phone services were affected drastically and their services were unreliable, although at that time of need internet access throughout the country remained intact. Hence, gave the doctors the chance to make use of the services provided by Twitter. Among the published notes in The Lancet, two doctors from the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Dr Yuichi Tamura and Dr Keiichi Kukuda, specially mentioned the challenges their community faced during the catastrophe. They reported that their first priority after the disaster was to reach their regular patients and inform them to acquire their vital pulmonary hypertension drugs, which was crucially needed at the time. They said that “Forming a supply chain for such drugs in the earliest stages of the disaster was difficult; however we found that social networking services could have a useful role.” It was also precisely stated that the ‘Re-tweet’ function of the network allowed the important information to flow easily and vastly among the twitter community.
Image via CrunchBaseIn today’s era of social media revolution, studies have shown that regardless of celebrities having several millions of followers, those who overflow their fans with casual and random tweets are more likely to get their fans bored of them; consequently they have a shorter career in comparison to those who cleverly maintain the sense of mystery and charm in their tweets. It was published by Bauer Media, a music consumer research firms’ publisher, that in today’s age, when the celebrities have become more reachable than ever; these social networking websites have made these celebrities lose their charm and become less appealing. He reported that celebrities have a very certain likelihood of boring their followers with their everyday activity rather than doing their promotion. He said "In this social media age, it's all too easy to follow your musical icons on a minute-by-minute basis. There's a consensus within the industry that this ease of access is leading to artists losing appeal more quickly.”
