Today I saw a deal labeled with Cyber Monday deal for Sceptre X325BV-FHD with 56% off, the price was cut down from $499.99 to $219.98. Just beautiful! Finally a good deal I said but when I scroll down I saw a comment from September: “Bought two of these TVs for the bedrooms. Paid $207 shipped for each one“. Wait a minute! What kind of deal for Cyber Monday is this as 2 months ago the prices was lower than now? In conclusion pay attention to fake Cyber Monday deals even are displayed on trusted websites. (see print screens at the end of this article)

If you want to know more about why in past year the discounts for LCD were real and big read below:

From late 2001 to 2006 an international criminal conspiracy to fix the prices of the LCD (liquid crystal display) panels used in these LCD TV, laptops, etc. Now after the largest Taiwanese producer and seller of LCD panels—and two of its former top executives were sentenced for their roles in this conspiracy the conspiracy is over…

The conspiracy went on until mid-2005, when participants learned that one or two of their major LCD customers may have become aware of the conspiracy, so the top leaders who had been attending these meetings began sending lower-level employees. The meetings were also moved out of hotel rooms and into public restaurants and cafes.

And a year later, the co-conspirators became even more concerned when they heard about an ongoing price-fixing investigation in the U.S. into the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) industry. To avoid detection, group members decided to meet one-on-one with each other in restaurants and cafes.

The FBI became involved in the case in mid-2006 at the request of DOJ’s Antitrust Division, and Bureau investigators joined forces with Antitrust Division prosecutors. In antitrust cases, as in many of our white-collar crime cases, the FBI uses its full arsenal of investigative weapons—executing search warrants, interviewing witnesses and others, analyzing records, conducting lawful surveillance, using cooperating witnesses, etc.

The top rising brands in tech are Apple(+129%), Amazon(+46%), Samsung(+40%) and Oracle (+28%). In fact, technology brands dominate the Interbrand 2012 top 100 as four of the five top risers hailing from the IT&C (Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and Oracle) and five of this year’s Top 10 brands come from within the technology sector (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Samsung).

Link

Participants from 33 countries uploading hundreds of thousands of images under free license for use on Wikipedia as part of Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 photo contest.

Volunteer Wikipedians organize the contest in each country, with the winning photos from national contests considered by an international jury in November. The international jury will announce the top-ten international photos and the overall best picture winner in early December. The grand prize winner will be flown to Hong Kong for a photo tour as part of the Wikimania 2013 conference.

WLM 2012 builds on the success of last year’s contest, where 5,000 photographers from 18 European countries uploaded more than 168,000 photos. Already in the first 10 days more than 5,000 participants in 33 countries have uploaded more than 80,000 photos.

Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) 2012 facts:
One Spanish contributor has more than 5000 uploads already
India leads with most contributors by country with over 1,000
September 9th was the busiest day so far with over 10,000 uploads

44 per cent of existing UK iPhone users say they want the new Apple iPhone 5 according to a consumer survey conducted immediately after news of the product was released. And 20 per cent of all smartphone users in the sample said they wanted to upgrade to the new iPhone without needing any further information about the product.

According to the research, the most popular feature on the iPhone 5 is likely to be its larger screen, highlighted as the most appealing by 19 per cent of respondents. The higher speed Internet access, making use of the new 4G mobile service which is being introduced to the UK, was highlighted by 17 per cent as most appealing. But 39 per cent said none of the new features appeal to them.

And in a hint of a backlash against Apple’s publicity machine, over a quarter (27%) of the consumers thought that the iPhone 5 had been over-hyped without anything exciting or innovative.

According to Apple, iPhone 5 is the thinnest smartphone in the world, with an all-new 7.6 mm anodized aluminum body that is 18 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter than iPhone 4S.

iPhone 5 combines an anodized aluminum body with diamond cut chamfered edges and glass inlays for a truly incredible fit and finish.

The new 8 megapixel iSight camera is completely redesigned with very good optical performance, yet amazingly it’s 25 percent smaller than the camera in iPhone 4S.
The new iSight camera in iPhone 5 features a sapphire crystal lens cover that is thinner and more durable than standard glass with the ability to provide crystal clear images. The new panorama feature lets you capture jaw-dropping panorama images of up to 28 megapixels by simply moving the camera across a scene in one smooth motion.

iPhone 5 features the new Lightnin™ connector that is smaller, smarter and more durable than the previous connector. The all-digital Lightning connector features an adaptive interface that uses only the signals that each accessory requires, and it’s reversible so you can instantly connect to your accessories. The Lightning-to-30-pin Adapter is also available to connect iPhone 5 to legacy 30-pin accessories.

iPhone 5 price and availability
iPhone 5 comes in either white & silver or black & slate, and will be available in the US for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model and $399 (US) for the 64GB model.

Reinventing yourself need not necessarily mean that you reinvent the wheel, nay.

At heart it means that you essentially tackle old challenges using new ideas. And in the traditional market place the latest idea with regard to marketing a product is personified in the form and substance of e-mail marketing software. The question(s) that the smart reader might be asking at this point of their reading is as follows: How exactly does this software work, and how does it alter the process of marketing? Both questions are answered below.

Email marketing software is basically software that sends out email marketing campaigns to a bulk of e-mail addresses. For purposes of efficiency this software program comes with an in build safety valve that comprises of the following features: A tracking device; eMail list management; Email address verification system, so on. The importance of all this safety valves is to ensure that your email marketing campaign is in no way undermined by leakages within the system: mailing to non existing e-mail addresses, being blind to the delivery or failure of a message to a recipient, and that sort of thing. The question(s) that needs to be immediately addressed at this point is as follows: How is such an approach to marketing distinct from spam mail and secondly how effective is such a modus operandi (method of operation) in terms of marketing?

With regard to the first question, this mode of operation is distinct from spam mail in several ways. First this method of marketing automation has the capacity to send personalized emails to the client. This differs radically from spam mail that drains all its contents to whoever happens to be the on the receiving end.Secondly this mode of marketing using e-mail marketing software cuts on the traditional costs that are associated with marketing .At the touch of a button it breaches space and time and thus in its own subtle way aiding to cut down on the marketing budget of many a firm.Thirdly, it solves one of the challenges that modern marketers have attempted to deal with for eons (sic).

It basically gives feed back with regard to a marketing campaign. This is via the tracking reports feature that is contained by these e-mail marketing software programs. Courtesy of these features, a marketer can gauge the success of a particular e mail campaign by clinically assessing charts, statistical tables, and other graphical representation modes via which data is captured.Fourthly, most of these e-mail marketing software programs are compatible with a wide range of email servers. This means that in so far as the infrastructure needed to facilitate the operations of this program is concerned, you are in relatively stable hands when you embark on a marketing campaign using this mode of marketing automation approach to woo clients. These are but some of the advantages that are inherent in e-mail marketing software.

As stated at the outset of the article, the business environment can be unforgiving. The shrewd operator sees the changes in the business environment and blends accordingly. If you lack the budget to foot a marketing department; if you want to add some zest to a flagging marketing campaign; if you want to change the manner that your business engages with the outside world, then you need to carefully study the potential that purchasing an e- mail marketing software brings to the table.

A user friendly interface, the capacity to dispatch an unlimited number of e-mails, and many more advantages are inherent in this method of operation of marketing. Stay ahead of the curve; get e-mail marketing software for your business today.

Let’s see what are the 3 best options available on the market of email campaigns.

1. Aweber

First in our top is Aweber. It is the best in tracking and segmentation and delivery success rate is very good. The pricing plans starts with $29 per month for 500 subscribers to $149 per month for 25,000 subscribers. I use Aweber for 2 years and I’m happy with it.

website: www.aweber.com

2. MailChimp
My recommendation to rookies in email marketing is MailChimp software. It is easy to use and it is free for up to 2000 subscribers. I use it daily for all my small customers.

Don’t worry if your database of subscribers is growing fast. The pricing plans of MailChimp is fair enough. From $30/month for 2,500 subscribers to $240/month for 50,000 subscribers. To have a comparative with Aweber, for 25,000 subscribers the price is $150, so similar cost.

website: www.mailchimp.com/

3. activecampaign

I like activecampaign because they give you two option for pricing plans: based on number of subscribers and based on how many emails do you send.
So, if you have a large data base but you send few email per month is better to choose second option, so you will pay by number of emails send. But if you send daily email campaigns you should choose first option.

The pricing plans starts with $9 per month for 500 subscribers to $135 per month for 25,000 subscribers, up to $225 per month for 50,000 subscribers. So, they have the best pricing plans but rate of delivery is not so high like Aweber.

website: activecampaign

Either email marketing software do you choose remember that subscribers database is your most valuable asset and you must wise use it to grow your business by increasing your sales.

Seagate and LaCie  today announced an exclusive agreement with the intent for Seagate to acquire a controlling interest in LaCie. Seagate has offered to purchase from Philippe Spruch, LaCie’s chairman and CEO, and his affiliate, all of their shares, representing 64.5% of the outstanding shares of LaCie. Following receipt of governmental approvals and the close of this transaction, Seagate would commence an all-cash simplified tender offer (followed as the case may be by a squeeze-out procedure) to acquire the remaining outstanding shares in accordance with the General Regulation of the French Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF).

Seagate has offered Mr. Spruch and his affiliate €4.05 per share in cash, minus a potential adjustment depending on the cash and debt position of LaCie at closing. This price may be increased by a possible price supplement of 3% in the event that the threshold of 95% of the shares and voting rights of LaCie would be reached by Sparrow within 6 months following closing, resulting in a maximum potential price per LaCie share of €4.17. Without the price supplement, the offer currently values LaCie at an approximate €146 million, or $186 million total equity value, including acquired net cash of approximately €49 million, or $65 million, as of March 31, 2012. The €4.05 per share price represents a premium of 29% to LaCie’s average closing stock price over the 30 trading days ended May 22, 2012.

Ricol Lasteyrie & Associés was appointed today as independent expert by the board of directors of LaCie, to deliver a fairness opinion on the price that would be offered in the context of the tender offer, including in the perspective of a potential squeeze-out procedure.

The transaction would combine two highly complementary product and technology portfolios, adding LaCie’s line of premium branded consumer storage solutions, network-attached storage solutions and software offerings to Seagate’s array of mainstream consumer storage products. The combination would accelerate Seagate’s growth strategy in the expanding consumer storage market, particularly in Europe and Japan, and add strong engineering and software development capabilities, as well as relationships with several key retailers.

The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 will be available for $399.99 SRP, and the Player 4.2 will sell for $199.99 SRP. These complement the already available Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and Galaxy Player 3.6.

Retailers carrying the devices include Amazon, Best Buy, hhgregg, Tiger Direct, WalMart, Office Depot and others.

Use your Tab as a universal remote, multitask on the web while watching and wirelessly stream the live feed from your TV to your Tab.

Everything’s more exciting on a bigger screen. Browse the web, explore over 450,000 apps from Google Play and Samsung Apps, and access thousands of TV shows and movies via WiFi.

A big 10.1″ entertainment machine The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is powered by Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, a dual-core processor with a microSD card slot and more.

and much more!

About Samsung Electronics America 

The device will offer HSDPA 3G support, as well as Android v2.3 Gingerbread OS.

The BLU Studio 5.3 is powered by MediaTek’s MT6573 processor, which incorporates a POWERVR Series5 SGX GPU to enable advanced 3D graphics capability bringing gaming and user interface capabilities that were previously available only to high-end smartphones.

The BLU Studio 5.3 is currently available unlocked with Dual SIM support at several online retailers in the US, and throughout Latin America with the MT6573 650MHz variant. An upgraded version with MT6573T in 800 MHz will be launched globally, including in Europe and Asia, before the end of March at a retail price of 199 Euros unlocked.

Motorola MOTOLUXE XT615 specs:

4 inch (480 x 854) edge-to-edge touchscreen display
800MHz Qualcomm MSM7227A-0 processor
512MB RAM
1GB ROM
0.3 megapixel front facing camera
8 megapixel rear facing camera with LED flash
Motorola MotoSwitch 2.0 user interface
Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread

As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.
If you would like to continue using Wave, there are a number of open source projects, including Apache Wave. There is also an open source project called Walkaround that includes an experimental feature that lets you import all your Waves from Google. This feature will also work until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012.

Link

iCloud is set of free cloud services, including iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream and Documents in the Cloud, that work with your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content in iCloud and push it to all your devices. iCloud stores your music, photos, apps, contacts, calendars, documents and more, keeping them up to date across all your devices. When content changes on one device, all your other devices are updated automatically and wirelessly.

iTunes in the Cloud lets you automatically download new music purchases to all your devices, so you can buy a song on your iPad and find it waiting for you on your iPhone―no syncing required. iTunes in the Cloud also lets you download your previously purchased iTunes content, including music and TV shows to your devices at no additional cost. Since iCloud stores your previously purchased iTunes history, you can see what you’ve bought no matter which device you bought it on, and since you already own the content, you can play it on your devices or simply tap the iCloud icon to download it to store and play later.

In addition, iTunes Match scans the songs in your music library, including music not purchased on iTunes, and matches them to the more than 20 million songs available on the iTunes Store, offering them in high-quality, DRM-free 256 kbps AAC encoding. Any unmatched songs are uploaded to iCloud so you can play songs, albums or playlists from your music library on your devices.

iCloud’s innovative Photo Stream service lets you take a photo on one device and have it automatically appear on your other devices. A photo you take on your iPhone is sent to iCloud and automatically pushed to your iPad, iPod touch, Mac or PC. You can even view your Photo Stream album on your Apple TV®. iCloud also automatically pushes a copy of the photos you’ve imported from your digital camera over Wi-Fi or Ethernet, so you can view them on your other devices. iCloud manages your Photo Stream efficiently, showing your last 1000 photos so you don’t run out of storage space.

iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud keeps your documents up to date across all your devices, automatically, so you don’t have to. For example, if you create a document using Pages on your iPad, that document is automatically sent to iCloud. When you use Pages on another iOS device, you can open the same document with your latest changes and pick up editing or reading right where you left off. Apple’s iWork® apps for iOS, Pages, Numbers® and Keynote® will take advantage of iCloud storage, and Apple is also offering developers the APIs they need to enable their apps to work seamlessly with Documents in the Cloud.

iCloud lets you see your App Store™ and iBookstore purchase history and download those apps and books to any of your devices at any time. Purchased apps and books can be automatically downloaded to your devices, not just the device they were purchased on. Simply tap the iCloud icon and download your purchased apps and books to any of your iOS devices at no additional cost.

iCloud Backup automatically and securely backs up your most important information to iCloud daily over Wi-Fi whenever your iOS device is connected to a power source. Once you plug it in, everything is backed up quickly and efficiently. iCloud already stores your purchased music, TV shows, apps, books and Photo Stream; iCloud Backup takes care of everything else, backing up your photos and video in the Camera Roll, device settings, app data, home screen and app organization, messages and ringtones. iCloud Backup can even help you set up a new iOS device or restore the information on one you already own.**

iCloud works seamlessly with your Contacts, Calendar and Mail, so you can share calendars with friends and family, and your ad-free Mail account is hosted at me.com. Your inboxes and folders are kept up to date across your iOS devices and computers, and with icloud.com you have easy web access to your Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Find My iPhone and iWork documents.

The Find My iPhone app can help you if one of your devices is missing. Just use the free Find My iPhone app on another device, or sign in at icloud.com from a computer to see your missing iPhone, iPad or iPod touch on a map, display a message, and remotely lock or wipe your missing device. Find My iPhone now lets you locate a missing Mac running OS X Lion.

Find My Friends is a new app available as a free download from the App Store that lets you easily share your location with people who are important to you. Friends and family appear on a map so you can quickly see where they are. Find My Friends also lets you temporarily share your location with a group of friends, whether it’s for a couple of hours for a dinner or a couple of days on a camping trip; when the time is up, the sharing ends. With Find My Friends, you get a notification every time you get a new friend request and if you give them permission, they can see your location. With a simple tap you can hide your location. Parental controls help you manage how your child uses Find My Friends.

iCloud will be available concurrently with iOS 5, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which includes over 200 new features including Notification Center, an innovative way to easily view and manage notifications in one place without interruption; iMessage™, a new messaging service that lets you easily send text messages, photos and videos between all iOS 5 users; and Newsstand, a new way to purchase and organize your newspaper and magazine subscriptions.

iCloud price: iCloud will be available on October 12 as a free download to iPhone, iPad or iPod touch users running iOS 5 or a Mac running OS X Lion with a valid Apple ID. iCloud includes 5GB of free cloud storage for Mail, Document Storage and Backup. Purchased music, TV shows, apps, books and Photo Stream do not count against the storage limit. iTunes Match will be available starting in the US later this month for $24.99 a year. Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars. Additional iCloud storage upgrades are available to purchase starting at $20 a year for 10GB, $40 a year for 20GB and $100 a year for 50GB.

iOS 5 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad and iPod touch (third and fourth generation) customers, allowing them to experience the amazing new features.

Modern websites have become complex. For example, on a recent day, constructing the CNN.com home page required 161 files served from 25 unique domains. This degree of complexity is common. In fact, a typical web page requires 80 files served from 13 different domains. Latency over wireless connections is high – on the order of 100 milliseconds round trip. Serving a web page requires hundreds of such round trips, only some of which can be done in parallel. In aggregate, this adds seconds to page load times.

Conversely, Amazon EC2 is always connected to the backbone of the internet where round-trip latency is 5 milliseconds or less to most web sites rather than the 100 milliseconds seen over wireless connections. In addition, EC2 servers have massive computational power. On EC2, available CPU, storage, and available memory can be orders of magnitudes larger than on mobile devices. Silk uses the power and speed of the EC2 server fleet to retrieve all of the components of a website and deliver them to Kindle Fire in a single, fast stream.

In addition to having more horsepower than a mobile processor, AWS has peering relationships with major internet service providers, and many top sites are hosted on EC2. This means that many web requests will never leave the extended infrastructure of AWS, reducing transit times to only a few milliseconds. Further, while processing and memory constraints lead most mobile browsers to limit the amount of work they attempt at any one time, using EC2 frees Silk from these constraints. If hundreds of files are required to build a web page across dozens of domains, Silk can request all of this content simultaneously with EC2, without overwhelming the mobile device processor or impacting battery life.

Traditional browsers must wait to receive the HTML file in order to begin downloading the other page assets. Silk is different because it learns these page characteristics automatically by aggregating the results of millions of page loads and maintaining this knowledge on EC2. While another browser might still be setting up a connection with the host server, Silk has already pushed content that it knows is associated with the page to the Kindle Fire before the site has even instructed the browser where to find it.

A typical web request begins with resolving the domain names associated with the server and establishing a TCP connection to issue the http request. Establishing TCP connections for each request consumes time and resources that slow down traditional browsers. Silk keeps a persistent connection open to EC2 so that there is always a connection at the ready to start loading the next page. Silk also uses EC2 to maintain a persistent connection to the top sites on the web. This approach reduces latency that would otherwise result from constantly establishing TCP connections. Further, Silk’s split architecture uses a pipelined, multiplexing protocol that can send all the content over a single connection.

Finally, Silk leverages the collaborative filtering techniques and machine learning algorithms Amazon has built over the last 15 years to power features such as “customers who bought this also bought…” As Silk serves up millions of page views every day, it learns more about the individual sites it renders and where users go next. By observing the aggregate traffic patterns on various web sites, it refines its heuristics, allowing for accurate predictions of the next page request. For example, Silk might observe that 85 percent of visitors to a leading news site next click on that site’s top headline. With that knowledge, EC2 and Silk together make intelligent decisions about pre-pushing content to the Kindle Fire. As a result, the next page a Kindle Fire customer is likely to visit will already be available locally in the device cache, enabling instant rendering to the screen.

The name “Silk” is inspired by the idea that a thread of silk is an invisible yet incredibly strong connection between two different things. In the case of Amazon Silk, it’s the connection between the Kindle Fire and Amazon EC2 that creates a better, faster browsing experience. For more information on Amazon Silk, visit www.amazon.com/silk.

Silk is available exclusively on Kindle Fire. To pre-order Kindle Fire, visit www.amazon.com/kindlefire.

This fanless aluminum enclosure is ideal for content creators, video editors and music producers looking for a dependable storage solution, offering fast file transfer speed and reliable backup of valuable data. The SK-3501 Super-S3 is designed for the latest 3.5” SATA hard drives and compliments a variety of quiet working environments. In addition, it is also equipped with a perforatd front panel and heat sink for optimized heat dissipation.

Akitio’s SK-3501 Super-S3 features the following:

• Versatile interface, including eSATA, FireWire 800 and SuperSpeed USB 3.0
• Durable all aluminum enclosure
• Large heat sink for passive cooling
• Stackable
• Fanless

Akitio’s various external hard drive enclosures are designed for 2.5” or 3.5” SATA hard disks and are ideal data storage solutions for desktops, as they provide fast file transfer speeds and dependable backup of valuable data. For optimal performance and compatibility, Akitio’s storage solutions are available with multiple interfaces with up to three different connections in one product, including USB, eSATA and FireWire.

Source

The Pantech Breakout smartphone, brought to market by Personal Communications Devices, LLC (PCD), shines with super-fast downloads packaged in a slim and attractive design. Customers will have access to custom Pantech widgets and can share media files between Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)-enabled devices by using the Net Media app on their Pantech Breakout.

Additional features:

· Powered by 4G LTE – customers can expect download speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G mobile broadband coverage areas

· Android™ 2.3 Gingerbread

· 1 GHz processor

· 4-inch capacitive touch display (480 x 800)

· Support for Google™ Mobile Services, including Gmail™, YouTube™, Google Search™ and Google Maps™, as well as access to more than 250,000 apps available to download from Android Market™

· 4G LTE mobile hotspot supporting up to 10 Wi-Fi-enabled devices

· Virtual QWERTY keyboard featuring SWYPE™ technology for quick and easy typing of messages and emails

· 5-megapixel autofocus rear-facing camera with HD video capture up to 720p

· VGA front-facing camera for still shots and video chatting

· Wi-Fi connectivity 802.11 b/g/n

· Bluetooth 3.0 support includes headset, hands-free, object push, advanced audio distribution (stereo), audio/video remote control, file transfer and phonebook access

· 8 GB pre-installed microSD

The Pantech Breakout will be available on Sept. 22 in Verizon Wireless Communication Stores and online at www.verizonwireless.com for $99.99 after a $50 mail in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.

Customers that purchase a Pantech Breakout smartphone will need to subscribe to a Verizon Wireless Nationwide Talk plan beginning at $39.99 for monthly access and a smartphone data package starting at $30 monthly access for 2 GB of data.