As the BBC has reported, the software company Apple has more cash on hand than the United States federal government, according to the company's financial records.
Apple's quarterly financial report shows that the company responsible for the iPad, iPod and the iPhone now has $76.4 billion in reserve cash, while the Treasury Department is sitting on just $73.7 billion.
The feds could probably learn a thing or two from Apple's success. Congress remains embroiled in a debate over spending and whether the federal government, which currently owes trillions in debt, should be allowed to borrow even more. International credit rating agencies have threatened to downgrade the national debt for the first time in the nation's history if Washington doesn't come up with a solution to lift the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling while implementing a concrete plan to get the nation's financial house in order.
Meanwhile, Apple's financial report shows that the company's profits, even through the last recession, are booming.
Some of the most popular viral videos are the ones that make you ask yourself, "Did that really happen?" This week, a buzzy clip on YouTube showed a guy apparently hacking into video screens in Times Square with just an iPhone and a piece of hardware the man calls a "video repeater." It's unbelievable, but the video looks thoroughly convincing. And so far the clip has been seen nearly 1.5 million times. Take a look for yourself:
So it is real? In a word: nope. What it is, in actuality, is a surprisingly effective bit of marketing for a movie. The video was created by a company called ThinkModo to promote this weekend's new release, "Limitless."
The original video was posted to YouTube on March 13, and there is barely anything in it to suggest that it's promoting a movie. The only clue is on the big video screen towards the end of the clip. As the unidentified man in orange jacket raises his "video repeater" up on a balloon, before he takes over the screen it is showing the trailer for "Limitless."
In a follow-up video posted by the same YouTube user, BITcrash44, there is an expanded introduction where the person operating the camera asks the man how he was able to create his device. He credits NZT, the fictional drug in the movie that gives the character played by Bradley Cooper supercharged brain power. The expanded video then ends with a full commercial for "Limitless."
So how did they pull off the stunt? Michael Krivicka of ThinkModo told The Village Voice, "Instead of some crazy CGI, we actually went to the screens and paid to play our own stuff on them." They choreographed the timing just right so that the video playing on the iPhone in front of the camera would pop up at just the right time on the big screens when the man held up his fake device. The screens were rented to run the footage over and over for an hour while they did takes of the clip to get the timing just right. The creators even made an effort to shake the camera around, giving it the look of an actual viral video.
The clip doesn't tell you much about "Limitless" as a movie, but that is the point. ThinkModo's James Percelay told The New York Times they are trying to promote "a whole new mind-set where you don't have to wrap everything up in a bow and if you don't, people are going to be a lot more interested in you and what you're selling." They believe that you can get the public more interested in a product by starting a conversation than with a traditional advertisement. Does it work? Well, you're reading this, aren't you?
However, if you'd actually like to know something about "Limitless", you can watch the trailer for the movie below. And no one in an orange jacket will interrupt.
AFP/File – The bells weren't ringing for many iPhone users this New Year's weekend, when thanks to a glitch …
NEW YORK (AFP) – The bells weren't ringing for many iPhone users this New Year's weekend, when thanks to a glitch the alarms on Apple's iconic mobile phones failed to go off, causing many to oversleep.
It was the second time in just a few months that the alarm function on the phone failed to activate correctly, prompting an avalanche of complaints on the social networking micro-blog Twitter.
"Dear iPhone, why didn't your alarm go off this morning? I set six of them. I've now missed church. Thanks for nothing," said one user Sunday morning.
"Some sort of digital iPhone pandemic is going on. Alarm clock failure reports are pouring in from all sources around the globe," said another Twitter user.
Apple said in a message sent to Macworld magazine that the California-based company was aware of the problem. "We're aware of an issue related to non-repeating alarms set for January 1 or 2," spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said.
"Customers can set recurring alarms for those dates and all alarms will work properly beginning January 3."
The problem seemed to be affecting Apple's most recent versions of iPhones and iPods launched in November, but website Engadget suggested that it may also have hit earlier versions.
The problem first occurred when the clocks went back at the end of October and early November when Australian and British iPhone owners complained of being late for work because their alarms had not switched over to the new time.
Apple did not immediately respond to a query from AFP on Sunday.
Mozilla today released an alpha version of its mobile browser for smartphones running Google's Android operating system.
Fennec 2.0, which is built on the same Gecko engine that powers the better-known Firefox 4, adds integrated synchronization and boosts performance by separating user interface and rendering processes, said Stuart Parmenter, Mozilla's mobile team technical lead.
"This release includes Electrolysis, which allows the browser interface to run in a separate process from the one rendering Web content," said Parmenter in a post to the Mozilla blog today. "By doing this, Fennec is able to react much faster to user input while pages are loading or CPU intensive JavaScript is running."
The Electrolysis technology will eventually also run add-ons -- another feature Fennec borrowed from Firefox -- in a separate process.
Mozilla's baked its Firefox Sync service into Fennec 2.0, matching the move earlier this week when it released Firefox 4 Beta 4 . The service keeps bookmarks, passwords, browser history, open tabs and other data consistent across multiple computers and smartphones.
Sync is available to users of earlier Firefox editions through an add-on , and to iPhone owners via the free Firefox Home app, but this is the first time that the functionality has been included with Fennec.
Fennec 2.0 can be installed on many -- but not all -- smartphones running Google's Android operating system, said Mozilla, which posted a list that included the now-discontinued Nexus One; HTC's Desire, Droid Incredible, EVO 4G and Legend; and Motorola's Droid 2 and Droid X .
Mozilla has not officially committed to a beta or final release date for Fennec 2.0 for Android, but notes from a Wednesday meeting pegged Sept. 7 as a code freeze deadline for Beta 1. If Mozilla's developers meet that date, the first beta would ship later in the month.
Android smartphone owners can try out Fennec 2.0 by downloading it from Mozilla's mobile site.
Either this is the most authentic-looking fourth-generation iPhone fake I've ever seen, or Apple has somehow managed to let yet another new iPhone slip through its fingers.
Vietnamese tech forum Taoviet just posted pictures and video (which I learned of via Engadget) of what looks to be a slightly more refined version of the next-gen iPhone that Gizmodo revealed to the world last month.
There's no way to verify whether the phone in this video is in fact the new iPhone (well, short of a letter from Apple requesting its property back), but it certainly looks like the real deal, from the flat, glossy front and back panels to the new, flat aluminum edges, the front-facing camera, the camera flash in back, and the new microSIM slot, similar to the one on the just-released iPad. Unfortunately, it looks like the handset refuses to boot; instead, all we can see on the display is a picture of a fireball and some apparent debug text in the bottom corner of the screen.
If anything, the apparent fourth-generation, 16GB iPhone in the Taoviet photos looks a little more finished than the one Gizmodo was showing off a few weeks ago, with the pair of screws that had been visible on the bottom edge of Gizmodo's iPhone missing in the most recent pictures.
The Taoviet site (which is slammed by traffic right now, so be patient) also posted teardown photos of the phone, revealing what appears to be a version of Apple's new A4 mobile processor, the same one that powers the iPad.
So how did these enterprising techies manage to nab what appears to be their own fourth-generation iPhone? Well, if an Engadget reader's translation is to be believed, the "unnamed source" who handed over the phone got a cool $4,000 for his trouble, or a thousand bucks less than what Gizmodo paid for its next-gen iPhone.
A couple of observations about this latest iPhone leak, assuming it's authentic: I want this phone. Slim, glossy and now without the unsightly screws on the bottom of the Gizmodo iPhone, it makes for eye candy of the first order, and the front-facing camera can mean only one thing: video chat at last (although how AT&T's 3G network would handle video calls is an open question). A new iPhone this summer would be my fourth in four years, so go ahead, call me a lemming. It's beyond my control.
Observation No. 2: If this is, in fact, a real next-generation iPhone we're looking at here, what the heck is going on with Apple's supposedly airtight security? In past years, Apple has managed to keep most of its high-profile products — particularly its iPhones — almost completely under wraps, but starting with the hapless Apple engineer who left his test iPhone on a Redwood City barstool in March, and now (apparently) this ... well, it looks like the folks in Cupertino are getting a little sloppy. Either that, or it's all part of Apple's evil master plan to whip up interest in the next iPhone (sounds pretty farfetched to me, but hey, anything's possible.)
What do you think? Does this latest "leaked" iPhone look like the real deal to you?
