Ubuntu se mete en los celulares con un sistema operativo propio

Al igual que otras plataformas que buscan una convergencia entre el mundo móvil y la PC, Canonical confirmó el arribo de su sistema operativo Ubuntu a los dispositivos móviles. Disponible en una primera instancia como una instalación no oficial para la línea de smartphones Nexus 3, la versión de Linux utilizada en más de 20 millones busca posicionarse como una alternativa ante un mercado dominado por compañías como Apple y Google, junto a las propuestas de Microsoft con Windows Phone y Research in Motion con sus teléfonos BlackBerry.

La compañía dio un primer paso en febrero de 2012 con Ubuntu for Android , una distribución para “mejorar” el Android convencional.

La versión actual es un sistema operativo que sólo comparte con Android el uso de sus drivers (ambos están basados en Linux), pero no usa una máquina virtual Java, por lo que los 700.000 programas con las que cuenta Android no estarán disponibles directamente. Ubuntu tendrá su propia suite de aplicaciones, y permitirá la suma de nuevas que estén programadas en HTML5 o sean nativas.

Canonical también planea lanzar un teléfono de diseño propio que llegaría al mercado en 2014, pero no brindó mayores detalles sobre el fabricante involucrado. Los recientes cambios en la interfaz de Ubuntu, denominada Unity, marcaron una tendencia en la distribución hacia la interacción en pantallas sensibles al tacto, y este lanzamiento representa un primer paso de la distribución para ingresar en el mundo móvil de los smartphones y las tabletas.

Las prestaciones de una PC, en un dispositivo de bolsillo

Según Mark Shuttleworth, CEO de Canonical, en un principio esta versión de Ubuntu apunta a los entusiastas de la plataforma, pero con una rápida expansión hacia el resto de los usuarios. “Por primera vez en la historia los usuarios de los teléfonos celulares pueden tener las prestaciones completas que tiene en una PC, y tenemos una ventaja en esto”, dijo el ejecutivo.

Así lo explica Mark Shuttleworth en video, mostrando los gestos que permiten controlar Ubuntu móvil:

El concepto se asemeja a la modalidad presentada por Motorola con su teléfono Atrix , que se convertía en una PC al ser conectado en una base que servía de conexión con un monitor. A su vez, el móvil también podía ser utilizado como una notebook mediante un dispositivo denominado lapdock.

Aún no disponible para su descarga, la presentación formal de Ubuntu para teléfonos ante el público será en la feria Consumer Electronic Show de Las Vegas, en donde LA NACION estará presente para la cobertura de los primeros lanzamientos del año que realizará la industria.

En busca del podio móvil

Con los dispositivos basados en iOS y Android, varias compañías disputan ser la alternativa a las plataformas dominantes. Microsoft busca de la mano de Nokia posicionar a Windows Phone junto a fabricantes como HTC y Samsung. La compañía de Redmond también desea aprovechar la integración con Windows 8 para sacar provecho de su dominio en el mundo de las PC, un segmento en lento retroceso frente a los teléfonos inteligentes y tabletas.

En este punto, la integración entre las PC y los dispositivos móviles también forman parte de los objetivos de Apple, que replicó el exitoso modelo App Store en su línea de computadoras con Mac OS X, utilizado en el iPhone y la tableta iPad, mientras que Google mantiene su apuesta en su plataforma basada en la nube con servicios como Gmail y Drive, entre otros.

Por su parte, Research in Motion presentará su nueva plataforma BB10 , un demorado lanzamiento que tendrá lugar a fines de este mes y con el que busca recuperar el terreno perdido en los últimos años con un renovado teléfono móvil tactil basado en el sistema operativo QNX, utilizado en su tableta Playbook.

Dentro de este pelotón de contendientes también se encuentra Firefox OS , un competidor que más se asemeja a la filosofía de la plataforma de Canonical y que ofrece un sistema operativo basado en el navegador web de la fundación Mozilla. Cuenta con el apoyo de las principales operadoras de telecomunicaciones y apunta a contar con un teléfono de costo accesible para mercados emergentes.

Por su parte, un grupo de desarrolladores responsables de Meego, la plataforma utilizada por Nokia para el N9, se reunieron para presentar a Sailfish OS , un sistema operativo basado en Linux que se encuentra en una incipiente etapa de desarrollo y que planea tener también, al igual que Firefox OS y Ubuntu, un teléfono para mediados de este año.

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Four Android productivity apps you should use in 2013

Happy New Year! Like most folks, I am working on some resolutions for 2013. One resolution I have is to be more productive. One way I am going to do this is by using my Android phone better. Now there are apps that I have, but really have not used to their fullest. As I work on this resolution, I might discover even better apps. For now I will focus on these impressive apps that can make anyone more productive.

I use Hootsuite on the computer, but rarely find myself engaging with it on my smartphone. With Hootsuite, you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts. The free version allows for up to five accounts and one member of your team to access the account. There is a pro version with a monthly fee, in which you can have more accounts and team members and helpful analytics tools.

The design of the app is very good. If you sync the web version to mobile, you will have everything automatically downloaded to the phone. When viewing content, you swipe left or right to change columns or streams. If you are in the middle of a stream, simply tap the top menu bar to automatically return to the top. The app allows for multiple profiles and scheduled tweets. My goal is to keep up with my feeds and tweets in real-time rather than waiting until I get to a computer.

Another web service that I started to use, but find myself not using it to the fullest. Producteev is a web-based task management service. With Producteev you can work as an individual or in a team by setting up workspaces and then organize tasks by labels. For each task you can assign a priority, due date, and share with team members, if you have any. Overall, this is a great service, since I like making lists, even though I rarely remember having made them.

The Producteev app is available for all platforms. The app has a very clean interface and is easy to find tasks. Probably the best way to keep up with tasks is to use the different widget for the home screen. Seeing the widgets will help keep those key tasks in the forefront of your mind. The app will work offline and syncs in the background.

I read blogs every single day, especially those related to new apps, Android, or mobile news. The only way I can do that is via my Google Reader. I find myself trying to catch up each day on the computer (just like with Twitter activity) when I would be better off reading a little bit over time during the day. NewsRob is a Google Reader that I have had for years. The interface is very clean and easy to use. The developer created a bunch of customizations options, which really make this reader stand out.

With NewsRob you can set up a notification of new articles, how you synchronize with Google and when, how many articles to keep in your cache, and more. If you set up folders within Google Reader, NewsRob will download the folders, too. This enables you to read the posts by blog or folder. The app provides a very clean blogpost display optimized for smaller screens. With each post you can zoom in or out, mark a post read or unread, view in the browser, and share the link to email or services such as Evernote. There is a free version of the app.

The last task I need to work on to be more productive is to keep up with the calendar. I find myself checking on the computer, after the fact, finding out that I am either late or forgot about a meeting or appointment. Using Google calendar is a good place to start, but I have not found the standard calendar app on my Droid was all that helpful.

Business Calendar is a very capable calendar app that has a ton of features. The app lets you view your calendar in a number of different views, and has search and favorite-calendar features, to name a few. The option of viewing different calendars, color coding and being able to easily add, delete, and edit events is helpful. The ability to use widgets for reminders is important. The pro version has over 10 different sizes and allows for the import or export of calendar files in the iCalendar format. Business Calendar also has a free version.

So my top goal or resolution for 2013 is to be more productive. I think using these apps more will help me accomplish that goal. Are there any apps you have but not using to their fullest? What resolutions do you have for 2013?

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Sony No Longer Shipping PlayStation 2 in Japan

You may have grown up with it. Your children may have, too.

Sony‘s PlayStation 2 home game console, released in 2000, was one of the most popular game consoles of all time, rivaled in sales only by the different kinds of Nintendo DS handheld console. It continued to be sold new on store shelves until just recently, even years after Sony launched its PlayStation 3 successor.

Now, however, Sony’s sent out its last shipment of new “PS2″ consoles for the Japanese market, according to Japanese gaming news site Famitsu (as reported by Polygon’s Emily Gera). Some other regions are continuing to receive shipments for now, but the heart of the PlayStation 2 phenomenon has finally stopped beating.

A gaming legend

Japanese PlayStation fans saw thousands more titles released in their language than English-speaking players. The PlayStation 2 was especially well-known for its role-playing games, such as the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, which was designed so closely around the PS2′s capabilities that its Windows PC version uses almost entirely the same graphics and controller-based interface.

New PS2 games continue to ship; Final Fantasy XI is even getting a full-fledged, retail-boxed expansion pack this March. It’ll only support the PS2 in Japan, however, where dedicated players continue to use the original “fat” PS2 consoles with the hard drive expansion slot. Internationally, it will only support the PC and Xbox 360.

PS2 games in a post-PS2 world

The first PlayStation 3 consoles — infamous for the silence which ensued at the Sony event where their price at launch was announced to be “599 U.S. dollars” — were backwards-compatible with the vast majority of PlayStation 2 and original PSOne games. Sony achieved PS2 backwards compatibility, however, by including the PS2′s actual “Emotion Engine” and “Graphics Synthesizer” chips inside each PS3, essentially making it two game consoles in one (and helping to drive up that launch price).

A redesign bumped down the price some, but at the cost of removing the Emotion Engine chip, which caused the redesigned PS3 consoles to sometimes have bugs or fail to play certain games. Today’s PS3 consoles lack both chips, which means that while they play PSOne games just fine, they don’t support PS2 game discs at all and can’t be upgraded to do so.

The legend lives on?

Sony has made HD remakes of certain PS2 titles, and republished others for the PS3 under the “PlayStation 2 Classics” brand. Dozens of such titles have been re-released as digital downloads in the PlayStation Network store.

This method of playing a PS2 game on the PS3, however, involves essentially buying the game again (assuming that it’s even in the store), sort of like Sony’s method of playing PlayStation Portable games on the Vita. Even rebuying the games for the PS3 doesn’t ensure continued playability on modern Sony consoles; the upcoming “PlayStation 4″ (not its actual name) reportedly won’t be able to play games made for the PS3.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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Autonomy’s Lynch defends record as HP confirms Federal probe

LONDON (Reuters) – Mike Lynch, the founder of the software firm sold to Hewlett-Packard last year in a deal tainted by accusations of accounting fraud, said he would defend the company’s accounts to U.S. Federal investigators.

HP confirmed in a filing late on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice was investigating Autonomy‘s books.

The PC and printer maker bought the British company for $ 11 billion last year to lead its push into the more profitable software sector.

Autonomy did not deliver the growth expected, resulting in Lynch’s departure earlier this year.

But worse was to come last month when HP wrote off some $ 5 billion of the company’s value and accused its former management of accounting improprieties that inflated its value.

The Silicon Valley company said it had passed information from a whistleblower to the U.S. Department of Justice, the SEC and Britain’s Serious Fraud Office.

“On November 21, 2012, representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice advised HP that they had opened an investigation relating to Autonomy,” it said in the filing.

“HP is cooperating with the three investigating agencies.”

Lynch launched a robust defense of his track record almost immediately after HP made the accusations.

He said on Friday that he was still waiting for a detailed calculation of HP’s $ 5 billion writedown of Autonomy’s value and a published explanation of the allegations.

“Simply put these allegations are false, and in the absence of further detail we cannot understand what HP believes to be the basis for them,” he said in a statement.

“We continue to reject these allegations in the strongest possible terms. Autonomy’s financial accounts were properly maintained in accordance with applicable regulations, fully audited by Deloitte and available to HP during the due diligence process.”

Lynch said he had not been approached by any regulatory authority, but he would co-operate with any investigation and looked forward to the opportunity to explain his position.

HP has refused to concede to Lynch’s demands for more information about the allegations.

“While Dr. Lynch is eager for a debate, we believe the legal process is the correct method in which to bring out the facts and take action on behalf of our shareholders,” it said in response to an open letter from Lynch last month

“In that setting, we look forward to hearing Dr. Lynch and other former Autonomy employees answer questions under penalty of perjury.”

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

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NORAD Santa trackers draw record number of phone calls, social media followers

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. – NORAD says it drew a record number of phone calls and social media followers during its NORAD Tracks Santa operation on Christmas Eve.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command said Friday volunteers answered more than 114,000 calls, up 12,000 from 2011.

NORAD’s Santa Facebook page had more than 1.2 million followers, up from about 1 million last year. More than 129,000 people followed on Twitter, up from 101,000 last year.

NORAD got 11,000 emails, up from 7,700 in 2011.

More than 1,250 volunteers answered phone calls, including first lady Michelle Obama.

NORAD Tracks Santa began in 1955 when a newspaper listed the wrong number for children to call Santa. They wound up calling the Continental Air Defence Command, NORAD’s predecessor.

The operation is based at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.

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iOS apps see Christmas sales spike shrink in 2012

Distimo just released its statistics on Christmas Day app downloads and revenue growth… and the download spike is far smaller than it was last year. Back in 2011, Christmas Day iOS app download volume spiked 230% above the December average. This year, the increase was just 87% — far below industry expectations. The revenue spike came in at 70%.

[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]

Interestingly, iPad downloads increased by 140% this Christmas, implying that the iPhone download bounce was really modest.

[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]

A few weeks ago, AppAnnie released statistics showing that iOS app revenue growth had stalled over the summer of 2012, whereas Android app revenue growth was relatively strong at 48% over a five month period. Both Distimo and Appannie are respected companies and their analytics are closely followed by app industry professionals. Could it be that the pace of iPhone app revenue growth has slowed down sharply from 2011 levels, even if Distimo and AppAnnie numbers aren’t entirely accurate?

This article was originally published by BGR

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Samsung expects to ship more than half a billion phones in 2013

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Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An outage at one of Amazon‘s web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.’s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.

The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows from home, Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said. Such devices range from gaming consoles such as Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 to Blu-ray players.

Evers said that the issue was the result of an outage at an Amazon Web Services‘ cloud computing center in Virginia, and started at about 12:30 p.m. PST (2030 GMT) on Monday and was fully restored Tuesday morning, although streaming was available for most users late on Monday.

“We are investigating exactly what happened and how it could have been prevented,” Evers said.

“We are happy that people opening gifts of Netflix or Netflix capable devices can watch TV shows and movies and apologize for any inconvenience caused last night,” he added.

An outage at Amazon Web Services, or AWS, knocked out such sites as Reddit and Foursquare in April of last year.

Amazon Web Services was not immediately available for comment. Evers, the Netflix spokesman, declined to comment on the company’s contracts with Amazon.

(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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Sprint salesman refuses to sell iPhone to customer, says his ‘fingers are too fat’ to use it

We’ve known for a while now that some mobile carriers have been instructing their sales staff to start pushing their customers away from Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and toward Android or Windows Phone devices. The reason is simple: carriers pay a lot more to subsidize Apple’s popular smartphone than they do with other devices and they’d prefer to have higher gross margins at the end of each quarter. But now a Tom’s Hardware reader reports that a Sprint (S) representative has taken pushing non-iPhone products to a whole new level and is actually insulting people who insist on buying the device.

[More from BGR: Online retailers caught using ‘discriminatory’ practices to target shopping discounts]

When the customer told the Sprint representative that he wanted to get an older iPhone 4 for free as part of his upgrade, the representative called the device “a piece of s—” that breaks too easily and is too small for many users.

[More from BGR: First photos of BlackBerry 10 ‘N-Series’ QWERTY smartphone leak]

Instead, the salesman recommended that the customer by a Samsung (005930) Galaxy S III. When the customer again refused, the salesman took things a step farther and told the man that his fingers were simply too fat to use the iPhone and that he’d need a larger screen to use a smartphone properly.

Needless to say, these up-sell-by-insult tactics weren’t exactly effective for the salesperson and the customer angrily stormed out of the store without buying a new phone.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Sri Lanka arrests 100 Chinese for cyber fraud, police say

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka on Saturday arrested at least 100 Chinese nationals accused of an internet fraud scheme targeting people in their home country, a police spokesman said.

The accused, all in Sri Lanka on tourist visas, are suspected of hacking into computers in China and then demanding their owners transfer them money, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakodi told Reuters.

Chinese police requested help from Sri Lanka, he said.

Officials at the Chinese embassy in Colombo were not available for comment.

China has been the top lender to Sri Lanka since the end of a 25-year war in May 2009 and thousands of Chinese are working in the country on Chinese-funded infrastructure projects.

(Reporting by Shihar Aneez; editing by Jason Webb)

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Is the Christmas card dead?

Author Nina Burleigh says the holiday photo is dead — and the internet killed it

Every year around the holidays, countless Americans sit down at their dining room tables to thoughtfully scribble pen-and-paper updates about how they are and what they’ve been doing with their lives to a select number of friends. These messages are usually written on the back of a recent family photograph (sometimes with Santa hats), before they’re sealed, stamped, and mailed around the country, where they’re displayed like a trophy over someone else’s fireplace.

Could that all be changing? This year, especially, there seems to be a dearth of dead-tree holiday cheer filling up mailboxes across the country. In a recent column for TIME, author Nina Burleigh says the spirit once distilled inside the Christmas card is dying, and a familiar, if fairly obvious perpetrator killed it: The internet. “There’s little point to writing a Christmas update now, with boasts about grades and athletic prowess, hospitalizations and holidays, and the dog’s mishaps, when we have already posted these events and so much more of our minutiae all year long,” she writes. “The urge to share has already been well sated.”

[Now] we already have real-time windows into the lives of people thousands of miles away. We already know exactly how they’ve fared in the past year, much more than could possibly be conveyed by any single Christmas card. If a child or grandchild has been born to a former colleague or high school chum living across the continent, not only did I see it within hours on Shutterfly or Instagram or Facebook, I might have seen him or her take his or her first steps on YouTube. If a job was gotten or lost, a marriage made or ended, we have already witnessed the woe and joy of it on Facebook, email and Twitter.

Burleigh says the demise of the Christmas card is deeply saddening. “It portends the end of the U.S. Postal Service,” she writes. “It signals the day is near when writing on paper is non-existent.” It’s true, says Tony Seifart at Memeburn — “my mantle is empty this year. In fact I haven’t received one Christmas card yet.”

SEE ALSO: The perks and perils of our newly indexed society

Let’s not get too nostalgic just yet, says Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic. Research firm IBISWorld anticipates that purchases of cards and postage will be the highest it has been in five years — $ 3.17 billion total. And Hallmark, the industry’s biggest player, has seen revenue hold steady since the early 2000s despite the financial crisis. We could also think about this another way: That desire to share, the willingness to inform, could just be extending itself beyond the physical form of the holiday photo. 

No matter what time of the year, people now write contemplative letters with weird formatting to an ill-defined audience of “friends”; these are Christmas letters, whether Santa is coming down the chimney or not. There are reindeer horns on pugs in July. And humblebrags about promotions in April. There are dating updates in November. And you can disclose that you were voted mother of the year any damn day you please… For good or for ill, perhaps we’re seeing not the death of the holiday card and letter, but its rebirth as a rhetorical mode. Confessional, self-promotional, hokey, charming, earnest, technically honest, introspective, hopey-changey: Oh, Christmas Card, you have gone open-source and conquered us all. 

The spirit of the Christmas card is indeed alive and well. It’s just not necessarily in a Christmas card.

SEE ALSO: Poison pens and lipstick guns: 8 real-life spy weapons

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Specs for HTC’s ‘M7′ phone may include 1.7GHz quad-core CPU, 4.7-inch full HD display

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Verizon Offering $5 Shared 4G Plan for Samsung Galaxy Camera

Imagine the powerful Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone, except that it can’t make phone calls and its backplate has been replaced by a digital camera — handgrip, zoom lens, and all. That’s basically the Samsung Galaxy Camera in a nutshell, and whether it’s a small, awkwardly-shaped Android tablet or a digital camera that you can play Modern Combat 3 on depends on how you look at it.

When the Galaxy Camera launched last month, it was only available in white, and cost $ 499 on AT&T’s network with a month-to-month data plan. But on Dec. 13, it launches on Verizon’s network, in both white and black. The Verizon Galaxy Camera costs $ 50 more up front, but in return it has 4G LTE instead of HSPA+, and Verizon is offering a “promotional price” for the monthly charge: Only $ 5 to add it to a Share Everything plan, instead of the usual $ 10 tablet rate.

A 4G digital camera

While it’s capable of functioning as an Android tablet (or game machine), the biggest reason for the Samsung Galaxy Camera’s 4G wireless Internet is so it can automatically upload photos it takes. Apps such as Dropbox, Photobucket, and Ubuntu One offer a limited amount of online storage space for free, where the Galaxy Camera can save photos without anyone needing to tell it to. Those photos can then be accessed at home, or on a tablet or laptop.

Most smartphones are able to do this already, but few (with the possible exception of the Windows Phone powered Nokia Lumia 920) are able to take photos as high-quality as the Galaxy Camera’s.

Not as good of a deal as it sounds

Dropbox is offering two years’ worth of 50 GB of free online storage space for photos and videos, to anyone who buys a Samsung Galaxy Camera from AT&T or Verizon. (The regular free plan is only 2 GB.)

The problem is, you may need that much space. The photos taken by the Galaxy Camera’s 16 megapixel sensor take up a lot more space, at maximum resolution, than ordinary smartphone snapshots do. Those camera uploads can eat through a shared data plan, and with Verizon charging a $ 15 per GB overage fee (plus the $ 50 extra up-front on top of what AT&T charges) it may make up for the cheaper monthly cost.

On top of that, the Galaxy Camera’s photos are basically on par with a $ 199 digital camera’s — you pay a large premium to combine that kind of point-and-shoot with the hardware equivalent of a high-end smartphone.

It does run Android, though, right?

The Galaxy Camera uses Samsung‘s custom software for its camera app, and lacks a normal phone dialer app. Beyond that, though, it runs the same Android operating system found on smartphones, and can run all the same games and apps.

Some apps don’t work the same on the Galaxy Camera as they do on a smartphone, however. Apps which only run in portrait mode, for instance, require you to hold the camera sideways to use them (especially unpleasant when they’re camera apps). And while it can make voice and even video calls over Skype, it lacks a rear-facing camera or the kind of speaker you hold up close to your ear. So you may end up making speakerphone calls and filming the palm of your hand.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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Obama election tweet most repeated but Olympics tops on Twitter

(Reuters) – An election victory tweet from President Barack Obama — “Four more years” with a picture of him hugging his wife — was the most retweeted ever, but the U.S. election was topped by the Olympics as the most tweeted event this year.

Obama’s tweet was retweeted (repeated) more than 810,000 times, Twitter said as it published a list of the most tweeted events in 2012. (http://2012.twitter.com/)

“Within hours, that Tweet simultaneously became the most retweeted of 2012, and the most retweeted ever. In fact, retweets of that simple message came from people in more than 200 countries around the world,” Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz said.

Twitter users were busiest during the final vote count for the presidential elections, sending 327,452 tweets per minute on election night on their way to a tally of 31 million election tweets for the day.

The 2012 Olympic Games in London had the most overall tweets of any event, with 150 million sent over the 16 days.

Usain Bolt’s golden win in the 200 meters topped 80,000 tweets per minute but he did not achieve the highest Olympic peak on Twitter. That was seen during the closing ceremony when 115,000 tweets per minute were sent as 1990s British pop band the Spice Girls performed.

Syria, where a bloody civil war still plays out, was the most talked about country in 2012 but sports and pop culture dominated the tally of tweets.

Behind Obama was pop star Justin Bieber. His tweet, “RIP Avalanna. i love you” sent when a six-year-old fan died from a rare form of brain cancer, was retweeted more than 220,000 times.

Third most repeated in 2012 was a profanity-laced tweet from Green Bay Packers NFL player TJ Lang, when he blasted a controversial call by a substitute referee officiating during a referee dispute. That was retweeted 98,000 times.

This was the third year running that the microblogging site published its top Twitter trends, offering a barometer to assess the biggest events in social media.

Superstorm Sandy, which slammed the densely populated U.S. East Coast in late October, killing more than 100 people, flooding wide areas and knocking out power for millions, attracted more than 20 million tweets between October 27 and November 1.

European football made the list of top tweets when Spain’s Juan Mata scored as his side downed Italy 4-0 in the Euro 2012 final — sparking 267,200 tweets a minute.

News of pop star Whitney Houston‘s death in February generated more than 10 million tweets, peaking at 73,662 per minute.

Romantic comedy “Think Like a Man” was the most tweeted movie this year, topping “The Hunger Games”, “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Rapper Rick Ross who notched his fourth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart this year, was the most talked about music artist.

(Editing by Rodney Joyce)

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New leaks suggest Microsoft Office for iOS could launch soon

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Are Online Degrees as Valuable as Traditional College Diplomas?

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with constant technology and personal computers. That might explain why they see such a value in online education.

A recent poll by Northeastern University showed that 18 to 29 year olds had a more negative view about attending college because of the high cost, and a more positive opinion about online classes than their older counterparts. The survey also showed more than half of the millennials had taken an online course.

Online education is attracting hundreds of thousands of students a year. Perhaps this is why more brick-and-mortar universities are searching for an online identity.

This week Wellesley College announced that it will offer free online classes to anyone with an Internet connection as part of the nonprofit project edX. Earlier this year, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up to fund and launch the online platform.

More: Harvard and MIT Want to Educate You for Free

Online education was even the talk in Washington this week when a group of panelists convened to discuss Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), which is an open source network like edX. These courses are very much like correspondence classes in the early 20th century.

But there are still those universities that only exist in a virtual world and students pay to attend. Are they as beneficial to students as attending a two- or four-year college?

“It depends at what level and what subject,” says Isabelle Frank, dean of Fordham College of Liberal Studies. “In general, fully online degrees are not valued as highly as degrees from brick-and-mortar institutions. This is because online-only universities do not have the faculty quality and interaction that occurs with full-time faculty and secure positions.”

She says that Fordham has online master programs and some online courses, but the model is “that of a small seminar style class with a lot of faculty feedback and involvement.”

Just like a physical college, a quality online education depends on the institution.

For example, students at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business take online classes and communicate with other students around the world—something students 25 years ago couldn’t have dreamed of doing.

“This affords the opportunity to learn leadership, team-building and managerial skills by solving problems and coordinating efforts for projects through the process of establishing real-time meetings, coordinating time zones and dealing with potential language issues,” Sher Downing, executive director of online academic services at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, said. “This value cannot be mirrored as easily in a traditional classroom, and for many companies with offices located around the world, this is a valuable skill, when the workforce is required to handle these types of situations.”

Downing said that students can save money by taking online classes because they no longer have to commute, live on or near a campus or relocate.

The millennials surveyed by Northeastern University are keen to take online courses. In fact, nine in 10 said online classes should be used as a tool and mixed with other teaching methods. The poll also found that students want flex­i­bility, which is exactly what online colleges offer.

Employers may not yet see an online degree in the same light as a traditional university but that is likely to change in the near future. It may just be that millennials, who don’t want to go in debt for an education like some of their parents did, are just a bit ahead of educators and employers.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Top Universities Want You to Take Free Online Classes in Your Pajamas

• Military Gives ‘F’ to Online Diplomas

• 2012 List: The Most Expensive Colleges in America

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Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com 

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iPad mini fails to draw crowds for China launch

Either Apple’s (AAPL) reservation-only system works better than anyone could have expected, or consumers in China have little interest in the company’s new iPad mini. Apple’s tiny tablet launched on schedule on Friday but according to IDG News Service, the turnout for Apple’s new slate was minimal. At Apple’s new flagship store in the well-trafficked Wangfujing district in Beijing, for example, turnout was “nearly nonexistent” according to the report, with no lines forming at all on Friday.

We’ve seen Apple rack up big numbers despite small launch-day turnouts in the past, but Apple’s reservation system does not appear to be responsible for the seemingly slow launch — according to IDG, many consumers who did turn up at Apple stores looking to purchase an iPad mini were unable to do so because they weren’t even aware that the reservation-only system existed.

Apple’s iPhone 5, which will presumably draw more of a crowd, launches in China next Friday.

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Facebook might buy Microsoft’s Atlas Ad platform to compete with Google

Is Facebook (FB) preparing to compete with Google (GOOG) in online advertising? According to AllThingsD and BusinessInsider’s sources Facebook might be taking steps to build its own advertising network for online websites. AllThingsD says that rather than build a new advertising network from scratch, Facebook could just buy Microsoft’s (MSFT) Atlas Solutions platform “that already delivers billions of ad impressions a day.”

BusinessInsider reports that Facebook will reportedly pay a lower price than the $ 6 billion that Microsoft paid for aQuantive in 2007 that included Atlas Solutions. It’s estimated that Atlas is worth more than $ 30 million — a small price to pay to compete with Google’s DoubleClick ad network.

So why is Facebook interested in advertising now? Well, it’s got over 1 billion active users with emails, phone numbers, and unprecedented amounts of “likes.” As BusinessInsider puts it, Facebook has so much data it could “tell marketers whether or not a Facebook user saw, on Facebook.com, an ad for a product before going to the store and buying it.”

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25 top-rated Facebook games from 2012

Games can be both a welcome and an annoying diversion on Facebook, the world’s most popular online social network. This year, Facebook crossed a big milestone — reaching 1 billion active users. Game companies such as “FarmVille” creator Zynga Inc. and Rovio Entertainment Ltd. of “Angry Birds” fame seek to tap into that vast base of users to gain more players for their games.

This week, Facebook Inc. issued a list of the 25 top-rated games that launched on Facebook in 2012. The company says the rankings are based on user ratings and engagement with the games. It’s the same methodology that Facebook uses to rank apps in its App Center.

Some of the games are played on Facebook’s website, while others are only on Apple Inc.‘s iOS or Google Inc.‘s Android devices using Facebook’s app.

Here’s the list:

1. “SongPop” (by FreshPlanet, on Facebook.com, iOS and Android)

2. “Dragon City” (by Social Point, on Facebook.com)

3. “Bike Race” (by Top Free Games, on iOS)

4. “Subway Surfers” (by Kiloo, on iOS and Android)

5. “Angry Birds Friends (by Rovio, on Facebook.com)

6. “FarmVille 2″ (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

7. “Scramble with Friends” (by Zynga, on iOS)

8. “Clash of Clans” (by Supercell, on iOS)

9. “Marvel: Avengers Alliance” (by Playdom, on Facebook.com)

10. “Draw Something” (by Zynga, on iOS and Android)

11. “Hay Day” (by Supercell, on iOS)

12. “Baseball Heroes” (by Syntasia, on Facebook.com)

13. “ChefVille” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

14. “CSR Racing” (by NaturalMotion Games, on iOS)

15. “Candy Crush Saga” (by King.com, on Facebook.com and iOS)

16. “Matching With Friends” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com)

17. “Legend Online” (by Oasis Games, on Facebook.com)

18. “Jurassic Park Builder” (by Ludia, on Facebook.com)

19. “Dungeon Rampage” (by Rebel Entertainment, on Facebook.com)

20. “Pockie Ninja II Social” (by NGames Ltd., on Facebook.com)

21. “Jetpack Joyride” (by Halfbrick, on Facebook.com)

22. “Social Empires” (by Social Point, on Facebook.com and iOS)

23. “Bil ve Fethet” (by Peak Games, on Facebook.com)

24. “Ruby Blast Adventures” (by Zynga, on Facebook.com and iOS)

25. “Pyramid Solitaire Saga” (by King.com, on Facebook.com)

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