A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
2012 recap : the year mobile internet surpassed desktop internet in India >> Next Big What
The desktop market is shrinking, and it's a country where Nokia's S40 (aka Asha) and Symbian together make up the majority of mobile internet use - and Samsung is third. (Thanks @avro for the link.)
iPhone 6: Release date, rumours, features and news >> T3
Actually just "rumours". (Thanks @mrbeardy for the link.)
Google controls too much of China's smartphone sector: ministry >> Yahoo! Finance
"Our country's mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android," the paper, posted online on Friday but carried by local media on Tuesday, said.
"While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google."
The paper said Google had discriminated against some Chinese companies developing their operating systems by delaying the sharing of codes. Google had also used commercial agreements to restrain the business development of mobile devices of these companies, it added.
A Google spokesman in China declined to comment.
A cloud on the Android horizon the size of a man's hand. (Thanks @rquick for the link.)
EC poised to unleash its wrath on Microsoft >> Tech News World
It will be déjà vu all over again for Microsoft, which apparently is about to be slapped with a stiff fine for violating the European Union's antitrust rules.
The European Commission will impose a penalty by the end of March for Microsoft's violation of a 2009 pledge to allow European users of its Windows operating system to choose among competing browsers, according to a Reuters report citing three anonymous sources.
The European Commission accused Microsoft of violating that promise last October, noting that between February 2011 and July 2012, Windows failed to provide a browser choice.
There's an unusual background to this story, which we hope to bring to you in the next few days. (Thanks @challengingviews for the link.)
HTML 5 bug allows huge data dumps on most Mac and PC Web browsers >> Apple Insider
A recently discovered flaw in the HTML 5 coding language could allow websites to bombard users with gigabytes of junk data, with a number of popular browsers being open to the vulnerability.
According to developer Feross Aboukhadijeh, who uncovered the bug this week, data dumps can be performed on most major Web browsers, including Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Opera, the BBC reported. The only browser to stop data dump tests was Mozilla's Firefox, which capped storage at 5MB.
(Thanks @clarkeviper for the link.)
PC market forecast to decline for a second consecutive year in 2013 >> IDC
Despite intense industry efforts to overcome market inertia, 2012 nonetheless ended on a sour note with global PC shipment volume shrinking 3.7% on the year. With limited initial traction from Windows 8 in the holiday season, and continued pressure from tablets, IDC now expects 2013 PC shipments to decline by 1.3% in 2013, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.
Disappointing holiday sales, an underwhelming reception to Windows 8, and continuing economic malaise that further crimped IT budgets marked the face of the market during the second half of 2012, leading to a year-on-year decline of 8.3% in fourth quarter shipments, the most substantial decline recorded for a holiday quarter.
Furthermore, emerging market growth potential is declining and coming closer to that of mature regions. 2012 marked the first year that emerging markets have seen a volume decline, and while 2013 will return to growth, it is projected at less than 1% and with modest, single-digit growth through 2017. For mature regions, 2013 will mark the third consecutive year of volume declines. IDC continues to expect limited growth in 2014 and 2015 with contracting volume in later years.
Wow. The emerging markets stagnation seems unlikely to be economically driven.
For 20-somethings, ambition at a cost >> NYTimes.com
Two years ago, as a production assistant at a Culver City, Calif., company that cuts movie trailers, Ms. Pitoun earned $10 an hour with no benefits (though an overtime bonus), with rotating weekend work. After six months she was promoted to a position "where one dropped ball could get you fired," she noted, and a raise to $12 an hour with benefits. She estimated that she worked at least 60 hours a week.
"There were days where I stayed until 4 a.m. just to send out one TV spot to one client in Japan and then had to come in 4 hours later for a whole new day," Ms. Pitoun said. "And days where I had to be at work at 5 a.m. to do voice-over sessions with actors in Europe to make up for the time change and still stay until 9 at night."
Her investment, like Ms. Myers's, paid off: she's now the assistant to the chief executive, though she knows that the path to producing, her long-term goal, "will get worse before it gets better," she said.
Ms. Pitoun's job surely would have been less demanding in the pre-Internet and smartphone age. If she ever turned off her phone for a few hours, her in-box would be flooded with e-mails or missed calls and texts.
This is a key difference in the world of people entering work now: they're expected to be connected all the time. Which has its disbenefits.
An iPhone fan's month with Windows Phone: Week one >> Macworld
Lex Friedman:
Before the Windows Phone arrived, I wondered whether slogging through 30 days with the Lumia 920 would be a chore. That's no longer a concern.
It'd be exaggerating to say that I'm actually thinking the opposite, that I might not be willing to go back to the iPhone 5 at the end of this experiment. But, to my surprise, I'm actually willing to consider that I could feel that way.
Despite its perhaps lackluster adoption in the marketplace, the Windows Phone OS itself is certainly no joke, and the Lumia 920 is a great device. Far from being a chore, my time with this phone is actually fun.
Shock as phones found to be largely interchangeable.
An update on TweetDeck >> The TweetDeck Blog
TweetDeck is the most powerful Twitter tool for tracking real-time conversations. Its flexibility and customizable layout let you keep up with what's happening on Twitter, across multiple topics and accounts, in real time. To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we're going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We'll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.
Twitter kills off another third-party app - in this case, one it owns. Does anyone believe the web-based version will be better? (Then again, it will save people from Adobe AIR.)
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