Samsung flubs its Apple Super Bowl dis

commentary Samsung wants fanboys to leave Apple's lines...only to get into another queue?

That's the footnote on an otherwise entertaining TV ad by Samsung that aired during the Super Bowl yesterday.

As it's done before, Samsung's pitch was effectively "why wait in line when you could have this, and have it right now?!" going so far as to say "the next big thing is already here...again." In this case, the only problem with that is that the product being advertised is not out yet.

The Note, the gadget that's a cross between a phone and a tablet, made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. It hits stores February 19, which is a week from this coming Sunday. While not that far off from a release, Samsung's angle here is perhaps a tad disingenuous.

Much of the drive behind Samsung's ad campaign--which, to be sure, is quite funny to someone who's covered just about every Apple product launch for the past few years--has been availability. Samsung's not so subtly been poking fun at the fact that people have a habit of lining up for Apple's products. But what exactly are these shoppers lining up for, and in multiple cities no less?

When Samsung began this campaign, the target was clear: the iPhone 4S. The device had been released just weeks before the ad came out, and there were places where people were still lining up to get one. In February though? Not so much.

Perhaps then everyone's in line for the iPad 3 in this ad, a product that has not yet been announced. That's actually believable in a ripped-from-the-headlines sort of way given that there was a man who did just that last August, nearly a month before Apple even took the wraps off what would turn out to be the iPhone 4S.

Of course the bigger overarching poke at Apple are the features, which the ad works to drive home by pointing out one of the line-goers being impressed with it having a stylus ("It's got a pen!?") and offering the capability to draw on photos, shoot video, and do video chats with friends. Short of the stylus, which late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said "nobody" wanted while introducing the iPhone in 2007, those are all features iPhone users have had for the past two generations of devices.

So what should people be taking away from this ad then? The same thing we got from the last one, which is that the fight between these two companies in the courtroom has now entered your living room, and has the final destination of your pocket and pocketbook. As soon as you can buy the thing, that is.

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3D printer produces new jaw for woman

An elderly woman has received a replacement titanium jaw, an operation participants say demonstrates the potential of patient-specific body implants.

Belgian company LayerWise today said that it produced an entire jaw using additive manufacturing, a technique that allows fabricators to make an item directly from a CAD drawing. The transplant demonstrates that precision 3D printing can be effective for both bones and organ implants, the company said.

The method selectively heats metal powder particles with a laser to construct an object layer by layer. Using this method allows LayerWise to create complex shapes that a custom made for patients and don't require glue or multiple parts.

"It used a laser beam to melt successive thin layers of titanium powder together to build the part," Ruben Wauthle, LayerWise's medical applications engineer, told the BBC. "This was repeated with each cross section melted to the previous layer. It took 33 layers to build 1mm of height, so you can imagine there were many thousand layers necessary to build this jawbone."

The woman who received the titanium jaw suffered from progressive osteomyelitis, which led to the decision to replace the entire bone. The operation was a success. The implant return the woman's jaw line and allowed her to speak and swallow normally again, according to LayerWise.

"The new treatment method is a world premiere because it concerns the first patient-specific implant in replacement of the entire lower jaw," Professor Dr. Jules Poukens, who was part of a team that worked on the implant, said in a statement.

The implant, which is coated with a bioceramic coating over the metal, is made with cavities to promote muscle and nerve attachment.

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Why Apple's A5 is so big--and iPhone 4 won't get Siri

Apple's A5 processor includes noise-reduction circuitry licensed from a start-up called Audience, and a chip analyst believes that fact resolves an iPhone 4S mystery and explains why the iPhone 4 lacks the Siri voice-control system.

Audience revealed details of its Apple partnership in January, when it filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. Teardown work from iFixit and Chipworks revealed a dedicated Audience chip in the iPhone 4, but the iPhone 4S integrates Audience's "EarSmart" technology directly into the A5 processor, the company's S-1 filing said.

The details answered a question that Linley Group analyst Linley Gwennap had about the A5 chip that powers the iPhone 4S: why is it so big? Larger processors are more expensive and can consume more power, and chip designers strive to trim every last square millimeter from their designs.

"Even after accounting for the dual Cortex-A9 CPUs and the large GPU that provides the A5 with industry-leading 3D graphics performance, the remaining die area seems too large for the usual mundane housekeeping logic," Gwennap said in a report yesterday. "To reduce system cost and eliminate the extra package required for the Audience chip, Apple cut a deal to integrate the noise-reduction technology directly into its A5 processor, which appears in the iPhone 4S."

Audience also said in its filing that its iPhone 4-era technology was good only when the phone was held near the speaker's mouth. Audience's noise-reduction technology built into the iPhone 4S is better, though.
"This situation helps explain why Apple does not offer Siri as a software upgrade on the iPhone 4. Although the older phone includes an Audience chip, the company has since improved its technology to handle 'far-field speech,' which means holding the device at arm's length rather than directly in front of the mouth," Gwennap said.

Siri support has been a contentious issue for some owners of earlier iPhones. Hacks to bring Siri to older iPhones generally require technically complicated measures.

Audience said in its filing that its partnership to license its noise-reduction intellectual property (IP) began bearing fruit in the last quarter of 2011:

Commencing in the three months ended December 31, 2011, Apple has integrated our processor IP in certain of its mobile phones. Pursuant to our agreement, this OEM [original equipment manufacturer] will pay us a royalty, on a quarterly basis, for the use of our processor IP for all mobile phones in which it is used.

Audience's second-generation technology, which introduced its far-field noise-reduction technology, began shipping in 2011, the company said in its filing. The iPhone 4 arrived in 2010, before far-field was included.
A third generation of Audience's noise-reduction technology is on the way, too, and Apple is a licensee, though Audience cautioned that Apple isn't contractually required to use it. Where it would likely be integrated is within the purported A6 expected to power the purported iPad 3.

"We have granted a similar license to this OEM for a new generation of processor IP; however, this OEM is not obligated to incorporate our processor IP into any of its current or future mobile devices," Audience said.

Apple isn't the only customer, though it's certainly the most prestigious. Other customers include HTC, LG, Pantech, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony, Audience said, for products such as Samsung's Galaxy S II, HTC's Titan, and Sony's Tablet S.

The Apple partnership has been lucrative for Audience, though the company didn't break out specific numbers.

"Foxconn, one of Apple's CMs [contract manufacturers], accounted for 81 percent and 70 percent of our total revenue in 2010 and the nine months ended September 30, 2011, respectively," Audience said. The 2010 revenue was $47.9 million, with a net income of $4.8 million, the company's first profitable year. For the first three quarters of 2011 revenue was $79.7 million with net income of $13.9 million.

EarSmart uses a digital signal processor to try to remove background noise and secondary voices so phone calls sound better when people are in restaurants, trains, or other noisy environments.

"Imitating the complex processing that occurs from the inner ear to the brain, Audience's intelligent EarSmart technology distinguishes and interprets sounds as people do naturally," the company says of its technology. "In a mobile device, the earSmart processor effectively isolates and enhances the primary voice signal and suppresses surrounding noise--for both transmit and receive--to enable clear conversations nearly anywhere."

Screening out noise gets harder when people are holding their phones farther from their mouths, as often happens while videoconferencing, making hands-free calls in a car, and issuing voice commands such as with the Siri system.

"Far-field uses are more vulnerable to background noise interference and poor voice quality given the speaker's distance from the device," Audience said.

In other words, without the latest Audience technology, Siri can't hear you so well.

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CEO Appleton reflected Micron's high-risk business

Steve Appleton mirrored the survivalist streak in the company he led.
Micron Technology CEO Appleton died Friday at 51 years old when a high-performance Lancair plane he was piloting crashed at Boise Airport in Idaho.

Lancairs aren't easy to fly. In fact, they're difficult enough that the Federal Aviation Administration gave notice to Lancair operators in 2009 that the planes had a "disproportionate" number of fatal accidents.
Though Lancairs accounted for only 3 percent of the nation's amateur-built airplanes, they accounted for 16 percent of the fatal accidents in the 11 months prior to the notice, according to Bloomberg.

"The plane's aerodynamic stalls, which result from loss of lift, are more violent than in other small planes," Bloomberg said, quoting Steve Wallace, former chief of safety at the FAA. And most of those crashes occurred near the runway.
The Idaho Statesman said Appleton's flight lasted only 80 seconds.

 Micron wasn't easy to pilot either. And the company always seemed to be a couple of quarters away from collapse. In the last few years, Micron has had a string of quarterly losses and reported an annual profit in only 4 of the past 10 calendar years. And the company laid off thousands of workers in 2009 when it closed manufacturing operations in Boise, Idaho, where its headquarters are located.

It's all part and parcel of the memory chip industry's notorious boom-and-bust cycles that have brought much bigger companies than Micron to their knees, including Texas Instruments, Hitachi, NEC, Hynix, and lately Japan-based Elpida.

But, amazingly, Micron has survived through decades of turbulence and is the only remaining U.S.-based maker of DRAM after Asia-based memory manufacturing giants crushed U.S. pioneers Intel and TI.
And in keeping with Micron's survivalist streak, it hooked up with Intel and dove headlong into the flash memory business in 2005. At that time, Micron and Intel reportedly received a $500 million prepayment from Apple so Apple could secure a supply of flash memory.

That company, Intel-Micron Flash Technologies, now has leading-edge flash chip manufacturing plants in Lehi, Utah; Manassas, Virginia; and Singapore.

"To play and win in the memory business you have to be a daredevil at heart. Fearless, courageous, and confident. Steve demonstrates these characteristics in spades," Semiconductor Industry Association Chairman Ray Stata said when presenting Appleton with the prestigious Robert N. Noyce award in November of last year.

And the memory chip business will always be high risk--something Appleton understood very well.

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Anonymous hacks lawyers for Marine accused of Iraq massacre

In a string of attacks today, members of the digital activist group Anonymous apparently hacked into the Web site of defense lawyers for a U.S. Marine accused of leading a civilian massacre in Iraq, and have reportedly acquired e-mails exchanged by attorneys in the case.

They also reportedly: published the names, addresses and other information of more than 700 officers in Texas after compromising the Texas Police Association's Web site allegedly over a cop being investigated for child porn; attacked a Salt Lake City police Web site to protest an anti-graffiti bill; defaced a Boston police department site over alleged police brutality during Occupy Boston protests; and attacked the site of Greece's justice ministry over the country's bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The Web site of the law firm Puckett & Faraj, which represented Marine Sgt. Frank Wuterich in his recent court martial, was inaccessible this morning. Wuterich allegedly led a group of Marines in shooting 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2005. The original murder charges were reduced and ultimately dropped entirely as part of an agreement last week in which Wuterich pled guilty to one count of negligent dereliction of duty. He was demoted in rank to private and will have to forfeit some of his pay, but will serve no time.

"As part of our ongoing efforts to expose the corruption of the court systems and the brutality of US imperialism, we want to bring attention to USMC SSgt Frank Wuterich who along with his squad murdered dozens of unarmed civilians during the Iraqi Occupation," Russian news site RT.com reported, quoting from a message that appeared on the law firm's defaced Web site. "Can you believe this scumbag had his charges reduced to involuntary manslaughter and got away with only a pay cut?"

"Meanwhile, Bradley Manning who was brave enough to risk his life and freedom to expose the truth about government corruption is threatened with life imprisonment," the message said."When justice cannot be found within the confines of their crooked court systems, we must seek revenge on the streets and on the internet - and dealing out swift retaliation is something we are particularly good at. Worry not comrades, it's time to deliver some epic ownage."

The hackers also said they had nearly three gigabytes of e-mails from the law firm that they planned to leak to the public.

"How do you think the world will react when they find out Neal Puckett and his marine buddies have been making crude jokes about the incident where marines have been caught on video pissing on dead bodies in Afghanistan?" the message says. "We believe it is time to release all of their private information and court evidence to the world and conduct a People's trial of our own."

Anonymous has a history of hacks in support of WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army soldier arrested for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, and often releases embarrassing data stolen from hacked law enforcement and police Web sites. Earlier today, members of the group created a stir with the release of a recording of a conference call between the FBI and U.K. law enforcement over Anonymous and affiliate hackers.

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Google's Google+ gambit: The Madman theory

Let me tell you a story about Richard M. Nixon and the Cold War--and yes, I promise it's relevant to a blog post about Google's controversial move to integrate its Google+ network deeply into the Google search engine.

In October 1969, President Nixon secretly elevated the U.S. military to full global readiness alert and ordered bombers loaded with nuclear weapons to fly near the Soviet border. If that sounds like an impulsive and dangerous move--well, that's because Nixon wanted the Soviet leaders to believe that he was so impulsive and dangerous that he might do anything. He called his theory the Madman strategy, and hoped that it would scare the Soviets into forcing the North Vietnamese to make concessions and thereby end the Vietnam war.

Nixon's scheme was too clever by half, and it didn't work. But I thought about it when I read Danny Sullivan's interview with Google search honcho Amit Singhal on the present and future of Search, Plus Your World (SPYW), the Google feature that melds Google+ and search.

Singhal says that real people--unlike, ahem, tech pundits--are pleased with SPYW. He says critics need to give it more time and see where Google is going with it. And when Sullivan asks him questions about why other social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, aren't part of SPYW, Singhal says Google+ gets so much emphasis because other social networks won't give Google the access to their data that it needs. He also complains obliquely about attract the attention of antitrust regulators.

What if Google's strategy for ending the stalemate with Facebook and Twitter involves a Nixonian decision to intentionally come off as impulsive and dangerous, in hopes of pressuring them to come to the negotiating table?

Google isn't just griping about Twitter not providing data--it's rolling out SPYW features that look incomplete because Twitter data is absent. And by making Google+ content so prominent in the world's most popular search engine, it's threatening Facebook's dominance of social networking in a unique way. One that might leave Facebook wanting to be part of SPYW, too.

If you're Facebook or Twitter and are concerned about SPYW's current features, you're probably even more alarmed by other actions Google might theoretically take to bolster Google+ and shut out other services. And you might conclude that its behavior so far suggests that it's capable of even more drastic measures.

I have no inside info on Google's thought processes, and I'm certainly not arguing that its executives sat around a conference table at the Googleplex and decided "let's be like Nixon!" But in the end, the company wants Facebook and Twitter to conclude that it's best if they share at least some of their social data. If it decided to impress that point on them in the boldest manner possible--rather than by asking politely--it might bring those companies to the negotiating table more swiftly.

As Singhal says, you can't judge Search, Plus Your World's potential based on this initial version. Machinations between Google, Facebook, and Twitter will play a huge part in shaping its future--and it'll be fascinating to see what it looks like a year or two from now.

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Gates sent dying Jobs a letter he kept bedside

Here's just the latest reported evidence that the late Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had a strong relationship at the time of the Apple icon's death.

Microsoft's co-founder told The Telegraph that yes, the two had some stormy days as fierce competitors. But things changed around 2007 when Gates left Microsoft to set up his foundation and the two did an event together (presumably referring to the D Conference in 2007, pictured right). Before Jobs' death in October, Gates said he paid the Apple co-founder a long visit. "We spent literally hours reminiscing and talking about the future."

And Gates told The Telegraph he later wrote Jobs a letter to tell him "how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know." After his death, Gates got a call from Jobs' wife, Laurene, who said Jobs appreciated the letter and kept it by his bed. "She said; 'Look, this biography really doesn't paint a picture of the mutual respect you had," Gates said.
The letter was not meant to be conciliatory, The Telegraph points out.

"There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness."

Earlier this week, Gates reflected on his friendship with Jobs in an interview with Yahoo and ABC. "We'd talk about the other companies that have come along. We talked about our families and how lucky we'd both been in terms of the women we married. It was great relaxed conversation."

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