AOL Announces To Release Professional Division Magazines Including Government, Energy and Defense

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AOL Inc. has just announced to be soon introducing its professional division, which will be called ‘AOL Industry.’ It is planned to be launched this Monday aiming at three different industries; government, energy and defense. The concept behind the idea is to form an amalgam of both, taking the habits of social media, video and design from consumer-oriented websites of today and then applying those concepts into the media for business professionals.

Jay Kirsch, the Vice President of AOL, himself pointed out that "(Trade media) hasn't done as good a job at innovating as consumer media." Kirsch was the first one to bring forward the idea behind this concept in front of AOL executives at the end of last summer. Kirsch was keen to observe that "If you look at most of the innovations that have really changed media most of them have been consumer facing and not business-to-business."

Will Ashton Kutcher’s Online Social Media Popularity Help Regain The Ratings of Two and a Half Men?

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It was officially publicized on Friday that Warner Bros. Television and CBS have replaced Charlie Sheen with Ashton Kutcher to play the role of Charlie Harper on their best comedy series titled, Two and a Half Men. The news was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter published on the Thursday right after which Kutcher also made a much encrypted tweet, “what’s the square root of 6.25″ further confirming the rumors.

With Charlie Sheen gone, CBS and Warner Bros. Television might be hope for Ashton Kutcher to bring his own fan following and perhaps help form a new audience of the show. The debacle between Sheen and the networking, specially the directors of the show was highly spoken of, and still remains an overly social topic today. Charlie Sheen decided to join Twitter after being suspended from the show and broke record in gathering millions of followers in shortest time. While on the other hand, Kutcher also has a very strong fan base; with 6.7 million Twitter followers, and even more fans on Facebook. There is no doubt that Kutcher is one of the most socially famous celebrities in the entertainment business today. So the question bumps in mind of many readers, will this high social reputation be any good to the ratings of the show?

When the V.P. and general manager of TV Guide Digital, Christy Tanner, was inquired for her opinion, she stated that “Two and a Half Men won’t live or die by social media.” She was very determined that “The show will continue to be successful if fans continue to find the show funny.” However, than she mentioned that this does not mean his popularity on social media will be completely useless, she also admitted that “This is an incredible opportunity for Two and a Half Men, Chuck Lorre, Warner Bros. Television and CBS to leverage Ashton’s Kutcher’s tremendous social media following.”

Tomtom Expands Its Services and Announces Its Fleet Management System In Order To Compensate For PND Sale

One of the most reputed Dutch manufacturer of personal navigation devices (PND), TomTom, which makes most of the navigation devices of truck and cars, has been forcefully pushed to expand its practices and product line due to the extensive competition from large companies like Google, which have also started marketing similar navigation products for free. Hence, TomTom recently released its new fleet management system which will allow its customers, such as compressor, Atlas Copco and KPN, to track big fleets of trucks or any other vehicles with the navigation system, to be monitored to only for their position but also their fuel consumption, speed, and driving patterns.

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The TomTom unit was only responsible for about 4 percent sales in the market last year, though still keeping its rank in the second position within Europe. Its 10 percent market share is second in the list after the leading company, Masternaut, an England-based which recently with French firm Cybit. The business solutions M.D. at TomTom, Thomas Schmidt, spoke on this raised matter of great competition, and related it to their new product, asserting that "The fleet management sector is extremely fragmented, we have different competitors in every country and we intend to take a leading role in consolidating this market over the coming years." Schmidt also shared his wisdom regarding the market competition, explaining that "One can benefit from takeovers only if you get the synergies and since there are so many players, literally hundreds sometimes in one region, it would take too long, years sometimes, to consolidate the technology platforms, which is why we prefer to grow organically."

Google updates the ‘News Near You’ Feature on the Mobile Version of Google News

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Travelers always on the move, either on a business purpose or otherwise, are being now being treated by the new update of Google. The mobile version of Google News site has just witnessed an update which now gives the users the local news, of wherever in this world they are, automatically by collecting their location data. The new feature was enrolled on Friday, allowing the easy functionality of a new section of news for users based on the view of news stories based on their current location, called “News Near Me.” It is accessible to both the users of iPhone and Android devices.

However, it shall not go unnoticed that this feature will once again allow the search engine giant to locate your device and in turn track your location all the time again. While you are visiting the news site, the user is prompted to approve the mobile browser to send their location data to Google servers. Once the feature is set up, it is very easy to use as the local headlines appear automatically in the section called "News Near Me." This section is generally placed in the bottom most position of the homepage though the users can easily adjust by changing the tab order in the personalization settings page to put the local headlines, national, world news in sequence with the “News Near Me.”

Hackers may have used Amazon server for Sony PSN breach

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The hackers behind one of the largest security breach in the history, one which corrupted the entire Sony’s PlayStation Network causing the personal information of around 100 million users being stolen, used an Amazon-run server for initiating the attack. Bloomberg was the first source to announce such news, claiming that it was cited from “a person with knowledge of the matter.”

Even though the hackers might have hijacked Amazon’s server, it is re

ported that they rather used a fake account for signing up an account using the Amazon’s EC2 service. After which they laid the foundation of one of the biggest cyber attack in the history ever. The account was immediately suspended right after the discovery of its nature but still, the allegation of using the Amazon’s cloud network to help precede such an enormous data breaches will definitely lay the reputation of Amazon questionable. This story is only published by Bloomberg, and it remains unconfirmed by either of Sony or Amazon, since the nature of such allegation is quite controversial itself and might have indefinite consequences.

According to the president of Online Intelligence, a security group, E.J. Hilbert, who has also previously worked as a cyber-crime agent in the FBI, claimed that if such news turns out to be true, FBI will definitely summon Amazon as a permanent party in the investigation of PSN hacks. She said that “The subpoena will give law enforcement a history of the transactions,” said Hilbert. “The search warrant will get them more detailed information, including payment information and which credit card was used.”