Google Puts Android and Chrome Under One Boss

Google announced on Wednesday a change in its executive ranks that could have broad implications for the mobile business.

Andy Rubin, who had been senior vice president in charge of Android, Google’s mobile operating system, has been replaced by Sundar Pichai. Mr. Pichai is the senior vice president of Chrome, and will now oversee Android as well.

Google has been in a confusing position because it has two unrelated operating systems: Chrome and Android.

At first, Google said they were separate: Chrome was for computers and the Web, and Android was for touch-screen mobile devices and apps.

But the lines among devices have blurred. Now, some computers (like the Chromebook Pixel that Google introduced last month) have touch screens, and people use mobile devices the way they used to use computers.

The personnel change is a sign that Google now sees the need to somehow coordinate or merge the two operating systems.

Though Android has been wildly successful, with 750 million devices activated worldwide, computers running Chrome’s operating system have not.

At a press event to introduce the new Chromebook, Mr. Pichai drew less of a distinction between the two operating systems than Google executives had in the past.

“So far, we have been in a world which has been pretty straightforward: Android phones and tablets and Chrome laptops,” Mr. Pichai said. “But lines do blur.”

“The way we think about it internally,” he said, “is as a user, you sign in to both these devices, you use search, Maps, Gmail” and other Google products. “All your Google services work seamlessly across devices.”

The company did not provide any details about how Chrome or Android might change under the new leadership.

“Today we’re living in a new computing environment,” Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, wrote in a company blog post announcing the change. “People are really excited about technology and spending a lot of money on devices.”

Mr. Pichai has had a fast rise at Google and has experience developing hardware, a new area of focus for the company. In addition to Chrome and Android, he also oversees Google Apps, like Gmail and Drive, for consumers and businesses.

Mr. Rubin is a big name in the mobile world. He is a co-founder of Android, which Google bought in 2005 and turned into Apple’s biggest mobile competitor and the most-used mobile operating system.

Google did not say why Mr. Rubin was replaced. Despite Android’s success, it is at a crossroads as device-making partners like Samsung and Amazon increasingly become competitors.

Mr. Page praised Mr. Rubin and said he would stay at the company in a new position, though he did not say what it would be. But there were hints that Mr. Rubin could join Google X, the company’s lab for creating new technologies like driverless cars, Google glasses and other wearable technologies. The glasses run Android.

Mr. Page wrote, “Andy, more moonshots please!” Google refers to Google X as a lab for “moonshots,” or world-changing ideas.

Motorola, the Android cellphone maker that Google spent $12.5 billion to buy, could also benefit from Mr. Rubin’s perspective as it tries to make phones that compete with those from Apple and Samsung. While Mr. Rubin was overseeing Android, Google tried to keep a strict wall between the two companies to appease Motorola’s competitors.

In a letter to Android developers on Wednesday, Mr. Rubin praised the Android team and wrote, “Today, the success of Android combined with the strength of our management team, gives me the confidence to step away from Android and hand over the reins.”

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Verizon Said To Be Getting A Flagship Nokia Windows Phone (Codenamed “Laser”) Of Its Own

Don’t get me wrong, HTC’s Windows Phone 8X is great and all, but the rest of Verizon Wireless’ Windows Phone lineup (think the Nokia Lumia 822 and Samsung’s ATIV Odyssey) is a bit lacking in the oomph department.

If a new report from The Verge’s Tom Warren holds true though, that may not be the case for too much longer. According to sources within Verizon, the carrier is gearing up to release a flagship Nokia Windows Phone with a spec sheet similar to the Lumia 920.

There’s precious little other information about this device aside from the fact that it’s apparently codenamed “Laser,” and that Verizon reportedly plans to throw its considerable weight behind the device (unlike the case with the ATIV Odyssey, the poor thing). What exactly that means for Verizon is still unclear, but I can hazard a guess or two.

I chatted with a high-level Nokia representative at Microsoft’s San Francisco Windows Phone 8 event who told me that strong retail partnerships with the country’s carriers was a priority for the Finnish company. That said, it wouldn’t be a shock to see Verizon retail workers getting some extended hands-on time with a forthcoming Windows Phone; after all, an informed retail sales force is key to Nokia moving units to those who don’t spend their days feverishly scouring tech blogs. AT&T also spends a considerable chunk of change on advertising the Lumia 900 when that was the hot new Windows Phone, and Verizon may well be doing the same (the fact that Microsoft is said to be chipping in some funds for advertising certainly doesn’t hurt).

Oh, and just in case you were hoping against hope that the Laser name actually sticks, you can probably stop now. The moniker was used for a Pantech dumbphone not too long ago, which means the chances of strolling into your local Verizon store and picking up a hot new Laser are pretty slim.

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Kim Dotcom starts new file-sharing site

Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom has set up a new cloud storage and file-sharing site.

Mega, a web-based service that lets people upload and store files of any kind, is a sequel to the Megaupload system that was shut down last January.

Police raids on the offices and home of Kim Dotcom led to the closure of Megaupload.

The Mega site went online at dawn on Sunday, with Mr Dotcom due to hold a gala at his New Zealand mansion later.

Mr Dotcom has said the new site complies with the law and warned that attempts to take it down would be futile.

"This is not some kind of finger to the US government or to Hollywood," he told Reuters on Saturday.

"Legally, there's just nothing there that could be used to shut us down. This site is just as legitimate and has the right to exist as Dropbox, Boxnet and other competitors."

Extradition hearing

Hours after the site was launched, Mr Dotcom tweeted that it had received 250,000 user registrations, although limited server capacity meant Mega was unreachable to many.

In a series of earlier tweets Mr Dotcom said every customer would have 50 gigabytes of free storage - far more than is offered by rival services such as Dropbox or Microsoft's SkyDrive.

Mega will be encrypted so only those who upload data have access to it.

Data is also being held in the cloud to make it easy for users to get and share files.

The 2012 raids on Megaupload were carried out because, said US law enforcement, many users of Megaupload were engaged in pirating content and illegally sharing it.

They accused Mr Dotcom and other managers at Megaupload had profited from the piracy.

Mr Dotcom has rebuffed the accusations and is fighting a legal battle to stay in New Zealand from where he ran Megaupload.

A hearing on whether he is can be extradited to the US is due to be held in March.

The case has generated controversy in New Zealand over the way the police and intelligence services gathered evidence before the raid and won an apology to Mr Dotcom from the country's prime minister.

Mr Dotcom has also won support from prominent technologists such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

The raid on Megaupload put 25 petabytes of data uploaded to it by its 50 million members into a legal limbo.

In one message, Mr Dotcom said he was working with lawyers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which campaigns on digital rights issues,to get access to that seized data and return it to users.

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Nokia releases 3D print kit for Lumia 820 cases - and hints at printable future

In a first for the smartphone world, Nokia has taken the interesting step of releasing a 3D printing Development Kit for its Lumia 820.

The 3D kit, available on Nokia's site from Friday, includes mechanical drawings of the back shell of the Lumia 820, which will allow anyone lucky enough to have a 3D printer to print their own smartphone covers.

Nokia's 3D kit means you can print a new case for your phone yourself. Image: Nokia

"We are going to release 3D templates, case specs, recommended materials and best practices — everything someone versed in 3D printing needs to print their own custom Lumia 820 case," Nokia community and developer marketing manager John Kneeland said on Nokia's blog, where links to the 3D kit can be found.

Interest in 3D printing has grown rapidly with the growing availability and falling prices of 3D printers like the Maker Bot, which costs around $2,000.

On the one hand, Nokia is giving customers the tools to build what they would otherwise purchase from Nokia or a third-party maker, but the move certainly can't hurt the company's comeback efforts — and image — by opening up to the growing and tech savvy 3D print community.

Nokia chief Stephen Elop had two words to say about the move on Twitter: "very cool".

Kneeland said 3D printing helps Nokia with "rapid prototyping", but it also opens up the possibility of Nokia passing the torch of making phones to others by simply selling "some kind of template".

"In the future, I envision wildly more modular and customizable phones," said Kneeland.

"Perhaps in addition to our own beautifully designed phones, we could sell some kind of phone template, and entrepreneurs the world over could build a local business on building phones precisely tailored to the needs of his or her local community. You want a waterproof, glow-in-the-dark phone with a bottle-opener and a solar charger? Someone can build it for you — or you can print it yourself!"

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Top four U.S. mobile phone carriers to sell BlackBerry 10 devices

In a major victory for struggling Research in Motion, the top four U.S. mobile phone networks said they would carry BlackBerry 10 devices.

Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile told The Times they would sell devices running Research In Motion's latest mobile operating system, which will roll out later this month. AT&T, meanwhile, said it would "support" the platform.

T-Mobile said it planned to "range" the latest version across North America. Verizon said it would carry a BB10 device but did not divulge pricing or the release date. And Sprint said it would bring BB10 to its customers later this year, with more information coming soon.

With all four top U.S. networks on board, the early signs are good for RIM, which is hoping BB10 will return the company to relevancy in the U.S. market.

RIM will hold a launch event later this month to mark the launch of the BlackBerry 10. There, RIM is expected to announce the first two BlackBerry 10 devices.

One of the devices is expected to have a full QWERTY keyboard while the other will be touch screen only. A Times reporter was able to check out a touch screen version at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.

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Experts urge PC users to disable Java, cite security flaw

Computer users are being advised by security experts to disable Oracle's widely used Java software after a security flaw was discovered in the past day that they say hackers are exploiting to attack computers.

"Java is a mess. It's not secure," said Jaime Blasco, Labs Manager with AlienVault Labs. "You have to disable it."

Java, which is installed on hundreds of millions of PCs around the globe, is a computer language that enables programmers to write software using just one set of code that will run on virtually any type of computer.

It is used so that web developers can make sites accessible from browsers running on Microsoft Windows PCs or Apple Macs.

Computer users access those programs through modules, or plug-ins, that run Java software on top of browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The US Department of Homeland Security also said people should stop using Java software.

"This vulnerability is being attacked in the wild, and is reported to be incorporated into exploit kits," the department's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) said in a notice on its website. "We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem."

The recommended solution was to disable Java. Three computer security experts also said computer users should disable those Java modules to protect themselves from attack.

A spokeswoman for Oracle said she could not immediately comment on the matter.

"This is like open hunting season on consumers," said HD Moore, chief security officer with Rapid7, a company that helps businesses identify critical security vulnerabilities in their networks.

Moore said machines running on Mac OS X, Linux or Windows all appear to be vulnerable to attack.

Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer with BeyondTrust, said businesses may need to keep using Java to access some websites and internet-based programs that run on the technology.

"The challenge is mainly for businesses, however, which have to use it for some applications," he said. "Oracle simply needs to do a lot more to secure Java and get their act together."

Security experts said the risk of attack is currently high because developers of several popular tools known as exploit kits that criminals use to attack PCs have added software that allows hackers to exploit the newly discovered bug in Java to attack computers.

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Facebook tests $100 charge to message Zuckerberg

Facebook is reportedly charging $100 to send Mark Zuckerberg a message on Facebook.

Mashable discovered on Thursday if you attempt to send Zuckerberg a message, the social network may offer to keep the message out of his “other” inbox for $100.

Mashable conducted tests from multiple accounts and found that only users that are not one of Zuckerberg’s 16 million followers were seeing the message. However, Mashable said that could still be coincidental.

This comes on the heels of the announcement last year that Facebook would charge $1 to send a message to a non-Facebook friend.

Mashable said some users reporting seeing the $100 charge back in December when attempting to send messages to non-friends, but this is the first time the charge has been associated with Zuckerberg.

Using the new “pay to message” service, users will be able to pay $1 to route their messages to non-friends.

“For example, if you want to send a message to someone you heard speak at an event but are not friends with, or if you want to message someone about a job opportunity, you can use this feature to reach their Inbox,” Facebook said in an online post back in December. “For the receiver, this test allows them to hear from people who have an important message to send them.”

The company says charging for messages could help discourage spammers.

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Wikipedia's most searched articles of the year revealed

A study of 2012's most read Wikipedia articles reveals striking differences in what proved popular across the different language versions of the online encyclopaedia.

Facebook topped the English edition while an entry for adult video actresses did best in Japan.

Hua Shan - a Chinese mountain featuring "the world's deadliest hiking trail" - topped the Dutch list.

By contrast, cul-de-sacs were the German site's most clicked entry.

The data was published by a Swedish software engineer Johan Gunnarsson as part of the Wikitrends project. His home land's most viewed article was a page dedicated to Sweden itself.

Sex and vampires

Lower entries on the lists also proved revealing.

While articles about Iran, its capital city Tehran and the country's New Year celebrations topped the Persian list, entries about sex, female circumcision and homosexuality also made its top 10.

An overview of Egypt topped the Arabic language version and was followed by a history of Muhammad Ali Pasha - the Ottoman army commander who became the country's ruler in 1905. He is viewed by many as the founder of the "modern" nation.

Continue reading the main story

English language most viewed

1. Facebook

2. Wiki

3. Deaths in 2012

4. One Direction

5. The Avengers

6. Fifty Shades of Grey

7. 2012 phenomenon

8. The Dark Knight Rises

9. Google

10. The Hunger Games

Sport featured prominently in the Indonesian edition with football, volleyball and basketball all coming within the top seven articles.

Italy appeared more obsessed with US television. Grey's Anatomy came out on top, and Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries followed shortly after.

The Russian version was led by an article about the country followed by one about YouTube. But entries for "porn site" and "unemployment" may provide greater insight into local users' lives.

Unusual results included the @ symbol making it into second place in the Spanish language edition, a type of Japanese holly topping the French list, and The European Regional Development Fund coming in third in Poland.

US pop star Justin Bieber managed to make both the Danish and Norwegian top 10s, but was trumped by British boy band One Direction who appeared in the English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish and Danish lists.

Thailand snaps

Elsewhere, Facebook's photo sharing service Instagram - which did not make any of Wikipedia's top 10s - has published its own round-up of 2012.

The firm has focused on locations rather than themes.

Thailand only recently held an auction to award 3G mobile network licences, and has instead focused on providing free wi-fi connectivity. It already has more than 200,000 hotspots and the government has announced a target of covering 80% of the country by May.Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport came out on top with more than 100,000 photos taken there, followed by the city's Siam Paragon shopping mall.

The Next Web tech blog suggests local habits had also aided Instagram's local popularity.

"Many mobile internet users in the region didn't spend much-time (or any time at all) using PCs, so their mobile or tablet is their single portal to the web and always-on web access is something new to them," wrote Jon Russell.

The US took the next seven of the top 10 spots thanks to snaps taken at California's Disneyland, New York's Times Square; San Francisco's AT&T Park; and Los Angeles' International Airport, Dodge stadium, Staples Center and Santa Monica Pier.

Paris's Eiffel Tower was the only European location to make the list.

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5-year-old’s Nintendo 3DS Christmas gift filled with porn

Five-year-old Braydon Giles received a refurbished Nintendo 3DS for Christmas, which his father, Mark, purchased from GameStop. Unfortunately for all involved, the device wasn’t properly wiped of its previous owner’s content, which included porn. As such, Braydon discovered the images while playing with the device and asked his brother for help in getting rid of them.

His brother Bryton quickly recognized the images for what they were and took the device to their father, telling him that it contained porn. Mark, upon learning this, immediately called GameStop, and, we’re guessing, gave them an earful. He said in a 9 News interview, “You can’t UN see this. He’s five years old. Maybe when he’s 18 or 20 maybe he won’t know anything about it but he’s not going to forget about it tomorrow.”

As a result, GameStop sent the family a new Nintendo 3DS, as well as a handful of games. It then issued a statement that is is looking into the situation. “We have a rigorous quality control process in place to ensure that existing content is removed from all devices before they are re-sold. Out of millions of transactions each year, ones like this happen very rarely.”

Of course, this isn't the first time devices have been sold with porn on-board. Back in October, for example, a girl discovered porn on her refurbished cell phone, an issue for which Radio Shack  which sold it, was sued. The moral of the story? When giving your child a refurbished gadget, it might be a good idea to scan through the device first to make sure everything is kosher.

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Zuckerberg’s Sister Unhappy When Facebook Photo Goes Public

Randi Zuckerberg, the former marketing director of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg‘s sister, was not happy at the end of her Christmas day.

A photo she posted to her Facebook account of her family, including the Facebook CEO, playing around with Facebook’s new Poke app, ended up on Twitter.

The photo was tweeted by Callie Schweitzer, a marketing executive at Vox Media, when she thought that it was a public photo on Facebook. Schweitzer followed or subscribed to Zuckerberg’s public Facebook feed and thought the update was public.

But it wasn’t. According to Buzzfeed and Zuckerberg’s tweets, Schweitzer was friends with another one of the Zuckerberg sisters and because she was tagged she was able to see it. “.@randizuckerberg demonstrates her family’s response to Poke #GAH,” Schweitzer tweeted along with the photo.

It didn’t take long for Randi Zuckerberg to respond. “Not sure where you got this photo. I posted it to friends only on FB. You reposting it to Twitter is way uncool,” she said on Twitter. Schweitzer clarified that she thought it was public, apologized and removed the photo promptly. Of course, this is the Internet —  the photo wasn’t removed entirely. Many web sites, including Buzzfeed, Business Insider, Mashable and Gizmodo all ran the photo.VentureBeat even said even Zuckerbergs are tripped up by Facebook’s privacy settings.

However, Zuckerberg tweeted that “it’s not about privacy settings, it’s about human decency.”

The snafu does illustrate something Facebook has started highlighting in itsrecent privacy controls overhaul — that your Timeline is separate than other places on Facebook and that tagged photos can still be viewed by others. Starting last Friday, Facebook rolled out its redesigned and cleaner privacytools. One of the additions included educational messages, which pop up when you untag a photo. The message tells users that the photo still might be visible by others.

AllThingD’s Mike Issac argues though that this has nothing to do with Facebook privacy settings, but rather bad judgement. “No matter how many privacy settings you tweak, no matter what you consider proper ‘digital etiquette,’ there is no accounting for the taste and discretion of your friends,” Issac wrote.

In Zuckerberg’s case, it’s hard to say where the blame should be put, but unfortunately for her, the photo is now visible to many, many others.

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Google Aims to Snag 90% of Microsoft Office Users

"Google will still need to develop the software further, to the point that people actually believe they can do almost everything they need to with Google Apps vs. Office," said analyst Greg Sterling. "The functionally isn't quite there yet." Google Vice President Amit Singh said his company is targeting 90 percent of Microsoft Office users. The war among Google and Amazon  and Apple and Microsoft - and others - heated up in 2012. But in a recent interview, Google Vice President Amit Singh, head of the tech giant's Enterprise unit, suggested the fight between his company and Microsoft is about to get even hotter. The interview in The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog started off with talk about how Google has been making inroads into the enterprise  with products like Google Drive and its cloud  computing platform, as well as Google Apps, Google's suite of Web-based productivity applications. Singh was asked pointed questions about the competitive landscape, what Google has that Microsoft doesn't, and how Google Apps and Microsoft Office are co-existing. The answers to those questions are stirring plenty of debate in the tech world. 90 Percent Grab "In the last year, if you look at the depth of where we've gone with Docs, both in the core features and in the desktop fidelity, we've made tremendous progress. Our goal is to get to the 90 percent of users who don't need to have the most advanced features of Office," Singh said. "Sheets does tables graphing, etc., out of the box. In Q3, if you import from Excel into Sheets, you won't be able to tell the difference in Sheets. We know the gaps between our features and theirs. We're improving them week by week. We're going to get to the 90 percent. If you need the last 10 percent, you'll want to use the desktop. The next thing is the import from PowerPoint to Slides. That's where [the recent acquisition of] QuickOffice is going to help us a lot." Untangling the Comments Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, said Singh's comments are likely based on internal Google analysis, and shows the company believes its Apps and cloud products have a large, addressable market in the enterprise. However, he said, 90 percent may be an exaggeration. "Google will still need to develop the software further, to the point that people actually believe they can do almost everything they need to with Google Apps vs. Office. The functionally isn't quite there yet," Sterling said. "In addition, Office still has a much stronger brand among users. Accordingly, Google will need to develop and market the Apps -- or whatever -- product brand to the point that buyers have more confidence in it." Still, Sterling told us, with the proliferation of mobile devices, Microsoft's overall position has been steadily weakening. He noted that Google Apps also carries a price advantage, which is a big driver of adoption. "Google doesn't have to rely on enterprise software sales as Microsoft does. In a way it's like found money for Google. Google can continue to use pricing as a way to lure more enterprise customers," Sterling said. "As the software continues to improve its should see increasing numbers of defections from Office."

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Today's Apps Gone Free: AppStart For iPhone, DailyCost, Dart Meister And More

Discover and learn about the very best apps for your iPhone and iPod touch with today’s AppBump featured app, AppStart for iPhone.

We also have a finance app that allows you to track your daily expenses, and a gorgeous and intuitive dart scoring app.

All app prices are subject to change at any time and without notice regardless of stated free duration. Price changes are solely under the control of the developers.

iPhone:

AppStart for iPhone ($0.99 → Free, 13.3 MB): If you’re going to download one and only one new app today, make it AppStart for iPhone. Designed by our own skillful team here at AppAdvice, AppStart for iPhone will make your new iPhone or iPod touch wholly more useful by pointing out and detailing all of the essential apps you’ll ever need. The simple but wonderfully retro interface allows you to quickly scan over each section to find only the topics you’re interested in. By the time you get the end, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

AppStart for iPhone is available for free for a limited time. It has a 4.5-star rating with a total of 168 ratings.

Dart Meister ($2.99 → Free, 16.5 MB): A gorgeous and intuitive dart scoring app. You’re able to keep score for your Cricket and x01 games with up to four players or teams. Enter throws just by tapping on areas of the board, and you’ll receive instant visual feedback. The app includes three scoring options for Cricket, 301 to 1001 starting scores for x01, gameplay rules, all kinds of stats, and game history.

Dart Meister is available for free for a limited time. It has a 5-star rating with a total of 7 ratings.

Fotomecha – multi lens simulated camera ($1.99 → Free, 6.9 MB): A camera app that allows you to capture multiple frames at a time and mash them together. You’re able to choose your lens type by rotating the dial on the main screen. While in shooting mode you can adjust other parameters, like the film type, shooting speed, and zoom level. Then just start snapping photos and Fotomecha will stitch them together.

Fotomecha – multi lens simulated camera is available for free for a limited time. It has a 3.5-star rating with a total of 33 ratings.

DailyCost ($1.99 → Free, 5.8 MB): Track your expenses throughout the day with this easy to use and easy on the eyes finance app. Just pull down on the receipt tape to add an expense. You can then define an amount and pick a category. The amount you entered is accompanied by the category icon on the receipt tape for quick reference. You can also swipe left and right to tear the tape and see your totals from other days. The app includes the ability to reorganize categories, 10 currencies to choose from, and 11 wallpaper options.

DailyCost is available for free for a limited time. It has a 5-star rating with a total of 17 ratings.

Dictionary+ ($1.99 → Free, 32.6 MB): A slick and simple offline dictionary. The app loads in a snap, allowing you to type away in the search field at the top within seconds. As you type, the app will provide you with suggestions. Tap on a listing to view definitions, examples, synonyms, and antonyms. The app also includes word history.

Dictionary+ is available for free for a limited time. It has a 3-star rating with a total of 7 ratings.

Universal:

Score! Classic Goals ($0.99 → Free, 34.3 MB): Recreate the most amazing goals from the last four decades in this unique line-drawing soccer game. Instead of being in direct control of your players, you merely get to control the direction of their passes and shots. But it’s much more difficult than it sounds since you have to anticipate movements and make precise drawings to score goals. The game includes 420 levels, 140 goals to recreate, three modes, and achievements via Game Center.

Score! Classic Goals is available for free for a limited time. It has a 5-star rating with a total of 32 ratings.

Crystal Tower Pro ($0.99 → Free, 43.3 MB): A physics-based puzzle game that has you smashing 3-D crystal blocks. The goal of the game is to remove all of the blue blocks by tapping on them while keeping the red blocks safe. Before you start removing blue blocks, you’ll want to consider what will happen when you do. If a red block falls too far, it will break. If it falls off of the platform, well, you don’t even want to know what happens then. The game includes three level packs, more than 100 block towers modeled after real towers, multitouch controls, and achievements and leaderboards via Game Center.

Crystal Tower Pro is available for free for a limited time. It has a 4-star rating with a total of 11 ratings.

Blowup!! ($0.99 → Free, 68.9 MB): Gather blocks and transform them into “Ultimate Robots” in this funky remove ‘em-style game. Tap on groups of eight or more blocks of the same color to blow them up and stave off your own destruction. You can remove single blocks by deploying Nibble, but he can only be used a total of three times before you need to earn more turns, which can be done by blowing up 13 or more blocks at once. The game includes four boards, multiple difficulty levels, chiptunes, and achievements and leaderboards via Game Center.

Blowup!! is available for free for a limited time. It has a 4.5-star rating with a total of 643 ratings.

That concludes today’s issue of Apps Gone Free. If you like staying on top of these daily deals, don’t forget to check out our free AppsGoneFree app. 

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Windows 8 fails to spur boom in computer buying

BELLEVUE, Wash. — It used to be that a new version of the Windows operating system was enough to get people excited about buying a new computer, giving sales a nice pop.

Not this time. Windows 8, the latest edition of Microsoft’s software, failed to pack shoppers into a Microsoft store in a mall here last week, when parking lots in the area were overflowing. The trickle of shopping bags leaving the store with merchandise was nothing like the steady stream at a bustling Apple store upstairs.

Claude Ballard was among the customers at the Microsoft store who tried out Surface, a new Microsoft-designed Windows tablet. Ballard, who described himself as a semi-reired computer systems manager for a real estate firm, said he was intrigued by the eye-catching design of Windows 8, but not enough to buy a new computer this year.

‘‘It’s economics, really,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s going to be a better year for my mechanic than it is for me.’’

Weak PC sales this holiday season suggest the struggles of Microsoft and other companies that depend heavily on the computer business will not abate soon. Plenty of consumers already own PCs and seem content to make do with what they have, especially in a shaky economy in which less expensive mobile devices are bidding for a share of what’s in their wallets.

Although there are also many tablets running Microsoft’s new touch-friendly Windows, they have so far failed to emerge from the shadow of competing products from Apple­ and Amazon and other devices that are being snapped up by holiday shoppers.

Emmanuel Fromont, president of the Americas division of Acer, the world’s number four PC maker, said sales of the company’s Windows 8 PCs had been lower than expected. He said one factor was the system’s unfamiliar design, which appeared to be making consumers cautious.

The clearest evidence of Windows 8’s disappointing introduction comes from the research firm NPD, which estimates that sales of Windows machines have actually dropped from a year ago.

According to NPD, stores in the United States sold 13 percent fewer Windows devices from late October, when Windows 8 made its debut, through the first week in December, than in the same period last year.

Those figures do not include sales in Microsoft’s own stores, which were the only place to buy a Surface tablet during that period, but because the stores are scarce, analysts believe it is unlikely they made a big difference.

‘‘I think everybody would have hoped for a better start,’’ said Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD. ‘‘The thing is, this market is not the same market that Windows 7 or Vista or even XP launched into.’’

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What Makes Nokia So Risky Still?

Nokia’s new Lumia smartphone is about as difficult to buy in the United States as Apple’s iPhone 5. In many online and brick-and-mortar stores, the Lumia 920 is sold out. But does that mean it’s popular?
On Amazon.com, the Lumia 920 is labeled “backordered” with a shipping time of one to two weeks. In Manhattan, the phone is not available for an in-store pickup at any Best Buy location. This month, Nokia representatives even said the company was struggling to get the phones out to technology journalists who were interested in reviewing the device because there weren’t enough to go around.

Nokia’s last flagship phone, the Lumia 900, didn’t sell very well here. Zacks Equity Research says the sold-out Lumia 920 is an early sign that Nokia has a “fighting chance” against Apple and the army of Android phones on the market.

But it’s difficult to believe that the Lumia 920, an exclusive to AT&T in the United States, is drawing such a crowd. Tero Kuittinen, an independent mobile analyst, says he thinks Nokia limited the supply of the Lumia here because it was aiming its first wave at Europe, where its smartphones have sold better in the past.

He noted that on Amazon, for instance, the Lumia 920 sold out just three days after it went on sale on Nov. 7, and the “backordered” status has stuck ever since — a sign that Nokia may simply be lowballing supply because it doesn’t expect to sell many phones here.

Doug Dawson, a Nokia spokesman, declined to comment on whether the difficulty of buying the phone was related to unusually low supply. He said Nokia didn’t have numbers to share about early sales.

“You can be very sure that we are working hard to meet the demand,” Mr. Dawson said.

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The top 10 sites on the web for 2012

1 Googel The site has been online for at least fifteen years. About 30% of visitors to this site come from the US, where it has attained a traffic rank of 1, and roughly 20% of visits to Google consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). The time spent in a typical visit to the site is about fourteen minutes, with 29 seconds spent on each pageview. 

2 Facebook has been online since 1997, and the time spent in a typical visit to Facebook is roughly 26 minutes, with 43 seconds spent on each pageview. Relative to the overall population of internet users, this site's audience tends to be users who browse from school and home; they are also disproportionately women aged under 25 and 35–45.

3 Youtube Roughly 20% of visitors to the site come from the US. It has a bounce rate of about 31% (i.e., 31% of visits consist of only one page view , and YouTube has been online since 2005. The site belongs to the “Video Sharing” category.










4 Yahoo roughly 31% of visits to the site consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). While we estimate that 33% of visitors to the site come from the US, where it is ranked #4, it is also popular in Taiwan, where it is ranked #1. Compared with internet averages, the site's audience tends to be aged 45–55 and over 65; they are also disproportionately moderately educated women browsing from school and home who have incomes between $30,000 and $60,000. The fraction of visits to Yahoo.com referred by search engines is approximately 7%.






5 Baidu.com is ranked #5 in the world , The time spent in a typical visit to the site is approximately eleven minutes, with 33 seconds spent on each page view. Compared with internet averages, the site appeals more to Asians; its visitors also tend to consist of childless women browsing from work and school who have incomes between $30,000 and $100,000. The site is in the “搜索引擎” category of websites. Baidu.com has been online for more than thirteen years.



 6 Wikipedia The fraction of visits to the site referred by search engines is about 48%. The site belongs to the “Wikipedia” category. Compared with internet averages, Wikipedia's audience tends to be users who browse from school and work; it also appeals more to childless men under the age of 35 who have postgraduate educations. The site has been online for at least eleven years.

7 WindowsLive Visitors to this site view an average of 7.3 unique pages per day. About 4% of visits to this site are referred by search engines, and Live.com is located in the US. While approximately 17% of visitors to the site come from the US, where it is ranked #10, it is also popular in Mexico, where it is ranked #5.8 Twitter The site has been online for more than twelve years. It has a bounce rate of roughly 30% (i.e., 30% of visits consist of only one pageview). Twitter's visitors view an average of 6.5 unique pages per day. Visitors to the site spend roughly nine minutes per visit to the site and 41 seconds per pageview. 9 QQ.COM China's largest and most used Internet service portal owned by Tencent, Inc founded in November, 1998. Approximately 27% of visits to this site are bounces (one pageview only). It is based in China. The site has attained a traffic rank of 2 among users in China, where we estimate that 85% of its audience is located. Qq.com has been online for at least seventeen years.10 Amazon is based in the US. Relative to the overall population of internet users, the site's users are disproportionately Caucasian, and they are disproportionately moderately educated, childless women earning over $60,000 who browse from home. Visitors to this site spend approximately 38 seconds on each pageview and a total of ten minutes on the site during each visit. Amazon.com has a bounce rate of approximately 28% (i.e., 28% of visits consist of only one pageview).

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