Apple :The 'least green' company

Apple has been ranked the "least green" technology company by the environmental group Greenpeace because of its reliance on coal to power many of its premises.

A report, How Dirty is Your Data?, claims that the electricity used in the centres where Apple houses its servers is generated largely by burning the fossil fuel, and adds that a new facility soon to open in North Carolina will triple its electricity consumption. More than 60 per cent of the power for the new centre will come from coal.

'Facebook open to US intelligence' : WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are actually tools for the U.S. intelligence community.

Speaking to Russian news site RT in an interview published yesterday, Assange was especially critical of the world's top social network. He reportedly said that the information Facebook houses is a potential boon for the U.S. government if it tries to build up a dossier on users.

"Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented," Assange said in the interview, which was videotaped and published on the site. "Here we have the world's most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence."

If that's the case, it might surprise some that WikiLeaks has its very own Facebook page. In fact, last year, when WikiLeaks released a controversial batch of confidential documents--putting Assange on the run--Facebook refused to shut down that page. The company said at the time that the page did not "violate our content standards nor have we encountered any material posted on the page that violates our policies."

Facebook's response stood in stark contrast to the treatment of WikiLeaks by many other companies in the U.S. last year. Several firms, including PayPal, blocked the company's accounts.

But Assange didn't just stop at Facebook. He also told RT that in addition to the world's largest social network, Google and Yahoo "have built-in interfaces for U.S. intelligence."

"It's not a matter of serving a subpoena," he told RT. "They have an interface that they have developed for U.S. intelligence to use."

Surprisingly, Assange didn't mention Twitter, another major social network with which his organization has run into trouble.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Justice Department sent a court order to Twitter, requesting the social network deliver information from accounts of activists that allegedly had ties to WikiLeaks. In March, the Justice Department was granted access to those accounts following a judge's ruling in favor of the seizure. Last month, the Justice Department said that complaints over its desire to obtain Twitter information is "absurd," and its actions are quite common in criminal investigations.

However, the Justice Department didn't secure a search warrant for access to the information. Instead, it obtained a 2703(d) order, allowing investigators to secure online records that are "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."

For U.S. intelligence, getting information from Facebook is much easier, Assange said in the interview. He reportedly told RT that the U.S. intelligence community's use of "legal and political pressure" on Facebook is enough for it get what it wants.

"Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them," Assange said, according to the RT interview.

For its part, Facebook disagrees with Assange's sentiment. In a written statement to CNET, a Facebook spokesman said that it does only what's legal--and nothing more.

"We don't respond to pressure, we respond to compulsory legal process," the spokesman told CNET. "There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data [and] we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient. The legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard."

Motorola DEFY

When I first heard of the Defy, I expected to be greeted with a smartphone equivalent of a Panasonic Toughbook laptop, but no – the Defy looks like any normal smartphone. It is even smaller than my Nokia N8! It won’t take any design awards home as far as physical aesthetics is concerned, but it isn’t something you would be embarrassed to own. In fact it looks rather cute!

The Motorola DEFY comes in an eye catching compact box. Inside you will find the DEFY, a large 1540mAh battery, microUSB cable, 2GB microSDHC card, headphones and USB wall charger.

As a rugged smartphone, the DEFY is surprisingly small and light. It looks nothing like most rugged phones I have ever laid my eyes on. Hat tip to Motorola engineers for creating a rugged smartphone that not only looks normal but in fact stylish even.

The capacitive touchscreen is incredibly sharp. The DEFY packs a 3.7″ LCD with a resolution of 480×854, and is covered by a Gorilla Glass ensuring that it is as scratch-resistant. Multi touch is supported. Colour rendition is accurate and not oversaturated as you would normally find on an OLED screen. Contrast could be better

The DEFY is powered by Android 2.1 (Eclair) and Motorola’s own custom homescreen MOTOBLUR. The homescreen actually looks and feels like a normal Android homescreen.

Good

• + Small and stylish

• + Water, scratch and dust resistant

• + Good battery life

• +Social networking integration

Bad

• - Slow , might be android upate might fix things

• - Android 2.1

• - Clunky looking widgets

LG Blade Series P430 and P530

LG Electronics on May 5th launched its two new ultra laptops.

The 15.6-inch LG P530 and 14-inch LG P430 are the two new models joining LG’s new Blade series of ultra-portable, durable and powerful line of laptops.

The speacial features of these laptops include the latest Sand Bridge processors up to Intel Core i7 and Nvidia GeForce GT 520M discrete GPU’s along with other great technical features. However the designs used by LG for these laptops are the most newsworthy feature.

LG said that the two ultra tslim laptops P430 and P530 are designed using metal casing for extra durability for each model. Also the notebooks are done in a brushed aluminum finish with a special diamond cutting process used for the case as a final touch. The diamond cutting design requires the use of real diamonds to cut the edge of the case.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS37

Panasonic's new Lumix DMC-FS37 is near the top of the company's new tree of compact cameras. It loses out against some of the slimmer fruit in terms of size but, with a Leica zoom lens, 16-megapixel resolution and a fancy touchscreen interface, it certainly has the potential to justify its juicy £170 asking price.

Full product specification:

• 16.1 megapixel sensor
• 8x optical zoom
• Touchscreen
• Full HD video

FS37 is a mid-range, point-and-shoot compact that discards its physical buttons in favour of touch-screen controls. Sadly though, it’s actually this main selling point that turns out to be the camera’s biggest bugbear. While the FS37 is easy enough to use and capable of delivering solid image quality in good light, the touch-screen fails to deliver an engaging user experience, falling short not only in terms of general responsiveness, but also in overall resolution and a severely limited viewing angle. With an ever increasing number of smartphones boasting high-resolution, touch-sensitive monitors these days, the FS37’s monitor does feel like something of a step backwards

Samsung Infuse 4G

The Samsung Infuse 4G will be one of the first smartphones in the U.S. to rock Samsung's next-generation Super AMOLED Plus touch screen, which claims 49 percent more subpixels for better contrast and outdoor visibility. If that weren't enough, the screen measures 4.5 inches diagonally, making it one of the largest displays on a smartphone today.

Samsung Infuse comes with a 4.5-inch super AMOLED Plus display and runs on 1.2GHz processor. The device has an 8-megapixel rear camera capable of recording 720p HD video and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls. The smartphone is based on Android 2.2.1 and comes with TouchWiz overlay. At 8.9mm at its thinnest point, Infuse 4G is claimed to be the thinnest 4G smartphone available.

What is an IPO

An initial public offering, or IPO, is the first sale of stock by a company to the public. A company can raise money by issuing either debt or equity. If the company has never issued equity to the public, it's known as an IPO.

Companies fall into two broad categories: private and public. 

A privately held company has fewer shareholders and its owners don't have to disclose much information about the company. Anybody can go out and incorporate a company: just put in some money, file the right legal documents and follow the reporting rules of your jurisdiction. Most small businesses are privately held. But large companies can be private too. Did you know that IKEA, Domino's Pizza and Hallmark Cards are all privately held? 

 t usually isn't possible to buy shares in a private company. You can approach the owners about investing, but they're not obligated to sell you anything. Public companies, on the other hand, have sold at least a portion of themselves to the public and trade on a stock exchange. This is why doing an IPO is also referred to as "going public." 

Public companies have thousands of shareholders and are subject to strict rules and regulations. They must have a board of directors and they must report financial information every quarter. In the United States, public companies report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In other countries, public companies are overseen by governing bodies similar to the SEC. From an investor's standpoint, the most exciting thing about a public company is that the stock is traded in the open market, like any other commodity. If you have the cash, you can invest. The CEO could hate your guts, but there's nothing he or she could do to stop you from buying stock. 

Why Go Public? 

Going public raises cash, and usually a lot of it. Being publicly traded also opens many financial doors: 

• Because of the increased scrutiny, public companies can usually get better rates when they issue debt.
• As long as there is market demand, a public company can always issue more stock. Thus, mergers and acquisitions are easier to do because stock can be issued as part of the deal.
• Trading in the open markets means liquidity. This makes it possible to implement things like employee stock ownership plans, which help to attract top talent.

Being on a major stock exchange carries a considerable amount of prestige. In the past, only private companies with strong fundamentals could qualify for an IPO and it wasn't easy to get listed. 

The internet boom changed all this. Firms no longer needed strong financials and a solid history to go public. Instead, IPOs were done by smaller startups seeking to expand their businesses. There's nothing wrong with wanting to expand, but most of these firms had never made a profit and didn't plan on being profitable any time soon. Founded on venture capital funding, they spent like Texans trying to generate enough excitement to make it to the market before burning through all their cash. In cases like this, companies might be suspected of doing an IPO just to make the founders rich. This is known as an exit strategy, implying that there's no desire to stick around and create value for shareholders. The IPO then becomes the end of the road rather than the beginning. 

How can this happen? Remember: an IPO is just selling stock. It's all about the sales job. If you can convince people to buy stock in your company, you can raise a lot of money.