Apple’s stock has been tanking for the past several weeks, perhaps adjusting to market conditions. Here’s a trivial explanation for why a stock price might fall even when a company appears to be performing well: sometimes in a weaker market a firm’s stock price will decline to meet demand expectations, suggesting that perhaps it was too high before.
One might assume, in that scenario, that it will climb back up to somewhere between its current low and its previous high. Right now, it’s trading at the lowest price since May, six months ago, as noticed by 9to5Mac. The stock price is around $529 at the time of publication, and its market cap is at $499 billion. In August, the company became the most valuable company in the world when its market cap hit $621 billion on a stock price of $663. It closed just above $702 in September. More here.
If you want to take advantage of all the handy gesture shortcuts in Windows 8, but would rather skip the tablet or touchscreen display, Elecom's got a new space-saving keyboard that's right up your alley. It's a full-sized wireless keyboard complete with a dedicated number pad that does double-duty as a gesture-compatible touchpad.
When it drops in December for around $105, the Elecom TK-FDP055BK will also be able to be used like a laptop's trackpad for controlling the cursor and performing more common gestures like scrolling. But at the push of a button it will revert back to functioning like a typical number pad. Accountant-types who work with numbers all day might not appreciate the lack of physical keys, but the average PC user should find the added functionality more useful, particularly if they've already updated to the latest version of Windows. More here.
The iOS 6 version of Skype has been officially updated to support the larger 4-inch display on the iPhone 5. Prior to today, the application showed borders along the top and bottom of the screen, which was a bit frustrating since it didn’t provide an full, more immersed experience. Skype also said it fixed several bugs in the application, although it’s initially unclear what bugs were prevalent. As always, Skype is available from the iTunes App Store for free. More here.
You can pretend you're just a baseball fanatic, or prefer batting practice at night, but there's really only one reason someone is going to buy this heavy-duty machined aluminum flashlight shaped like a baseball bat. It's for protection—or more likely—for delivering physical intimidation to one's enemies under the darkness of night.
It's available in both 15-inch and 23-inch lengths for $36 and $46 respectively, but most will probably opt for the longer, heavier version. It's got a 3-watt LED bulb and various flashing modes, but again, these are features the flashlight's true target market probably cares nothing about. More here.
In a cute, little art project, this keyboard supposedly shows the most used keys on a keyboard. Think of it as an infographic IRL. Do you agree that these buttons are the most popular key? I swear I use C more than that! More here.
As if having to remember to bring along a charging cable isn't annoying enough, they seem to have a knack for becoming knotted while in your bag. But a company called Tylt has solved at least one of those problems with its Band Wall Charger that uses a ribbon design that's nigh impossible to get tangled.
The flat ribbon also wraps around the cylindrical plug for easy storage and cable management, and at just $40, available in four different colors, it looks like a nice alternative to your iPhone's included (30-pin connector) charger. Fingers crossed for a lightning version soon! More here.
There's a solar eclipse coming tomorrow, and while it may only be visible over Northern Australia and the Pacific, there are a couple of places you can watch it remotely.
The eclipse is supposed to start at 3:35pm EDT tomorrow. The Slooh Space Camera has a live feed from Cairns, Australia that will start at 2:30pm EDT. Folks at Slooh say this dispatch should be particularly stunning, since the event is supposed to begin around sunrise in the area.
You can also watch a stream from Tourism Tropical North Queensland, which will also broadcast from Cairns starting at 2pm EST. And since it's an important reminder to all our friends in Australia catching the moon blotting out the sun in person—don't stare at it directly or you'll go blind. More here.
Following a very lengthy wait, Research in Motion is finally going to launch BlackBerry 10. The Canadian company has today announced that it will hold simultaneous launch events around the world on January 30, 2013, during which “details of the smartphones and their availability” will be announced.
“Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best in class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities,” said RIM President and CEO Thorsten Heins on Monday.
“Thanks to our strong partnerships with global carriers and a growing ecosystem of developers, we believe our customers will have the best experience possible with BlackBerry 10. We are looking forward to getting BlackBerry 10 in the hands of our customers around the world.”
RIM has promised that it will unveil two new devices in January, which are expected to be the previously leaked L-Series and N-Series devices. The former is a touchscreen device without a physical keyboard, while the latter takes the traditional BlackBerry form. More here.
Is the love affair with Apple over for investors? Some seem to think so, even despite the iPad Mini hype. Since September, when Apple shares peaked, the prices have fallen 20 percent — from $700 to $547 per share.
Apple just recently fired several executive staffers, and add the fact that Google’s Android is just killing it, in terms of marketshare — which surged from 57.5 percent to 75 percent — and these don’t spell confidence for Wall Street. And some wonder if maybe the company doesn’t have much more room to expand, meaning that its customerbase could be maxed out.
“It has just been wave after wave of bad news,” says Gene Munster, renowned analyst at Piper Jaffray. Cupertino, however, denies any problem, saying the company’s still growing perfectly fine, thankyaverymuch. And its stock is up 38 percent on the year, which is still positive growth. Even so, it’s hard to ignore the decline in share prices. We’ll have to wait and see if this is just a drip in the pan or the drumbeat of doom for a falling enterprise. More here.
Microsoft's been holding Surface for Windows RT sales figures close to its chest so far, but CEO Steve Ballmer has allowed in an interview with Le Parisien that the much ballyhooed tablet is off to a "modest" start. The bombastic exec gave that appraisal while touting the imminent arrival of the tab's higher-powered sibling, Surface for Windows 8 Pro, though he didn't elaborate further. After all the cake it's no doubt lavished marketing the slate, we'll have to see if the software giant finds the hardware game tough to swallow. More here.
The faster the Internet gets, the less patience we all have with even the most insignificant of waits. A new study shows that a mere two second delay is enough for many people to give up and move on.
According to the recent study, based on 2.3 million views by 6.7 million unique users, users will start abandoning "short" videos after two seconds, and that 20 percent have moved on after five seconds. As far as the study is concerned, "short" equals "less than 30 minutes," so you can probably imagine the migration happens even faster when you're talking about a one or two minute clip.
This mass buffering exodus isn't the same across the board however. A user's patience also depends on the type of network they're using. Fiber, Cable, and DSL users are all pretty similarly impatient, but mobile users are far more likely to wait around staring at the buffering animation like a chump, which isn't all too surprising.
Where do you stand on the Internet video waiting game? Does two seconds sound like an instant, or more like an eternity? More here.
The VMultra combines a USB hub, an SD card slot, a DVD±RW drive and 500GB of storage into a surprisingly slim package that connects to any computer via USB 3.0. If you like, you can even fit your own 2.5-inch hard drive in the SATA III bay.
You'll have to take out the included 500GB HDD first of course. The company intends this to be a "perfect all-in-one peripheral," especially for notebook travelers looking to lighten their luggage; perhaps to make room for things like "clothes." Each VMultra will cost you $199.99 and will ship starting November 12th. More here.
For the longest time Just Born, the maker of Peeps, has been on the forefront of novelty seasonal marshmallow technology. But the company's monopoly ends now, here, with a mug-friendly Frosty marshmallow.
What would you rather have dissolving away in your hot cocoa? A gooey yellow baby chicken covered in sugar, or these adorable snowmen marshmallows sold in packs of five for $5? More here.
If you've ever thought it would be cool to have a miniature figurine of yourself—or maybe a loved one—just hanging out on your desk and doing it's thing, your day has come. The first 3D printing photobooth is due to open in Japan later this month.
From November 24th to January 14th 2013, those who wish get themselves a mini-me can go to the Eye of Gyre exhibition space in Harajuku for the procedure. The miniatures come in three sizes, roughly 4, 6, and 8 inches, and cost the equivalent of $265, $400, and $530 respectively, with modest discounts for groups. You can bet it'll still be expensive though. More here.
NASA scientists are having a lot of fun with Messenger, the spacecraft now orbiting Mercury. Not only they are documenting the planet at a resolution of 200 meters per pixel, but they are spotting all kinds of fun stuff. A few weeks ago it was the Sesame Street's cookie monster. Today it's a smiley crater.
It looks like even the craters on Mercury have heard of Bob Ross! The central peaks of this complex crater have formed in such a way that it resembles a smiling face. This image is oriented so north is toward the bottom.
So far, Messenger has taken 88,746 images "and extensive other data sets." After completing its primary mission—and still working like a champ—the spacecraft is going to capture another 80,000 images. More here.
As if RIM wasn't already having enough trouble struggling for relevance with BlackBerry phones, there's yet another thing about the handsets that makes them a bit less appealing compared to iPhones and Android devices: you could actually be allergic to a BlackBerry, in the most literal sense.
According to a recent study, around one third of all BlackBerries contain nickel, a metal that causes allergic reactions in 17 percent of women and 3 percent of men. As if that wasn't bad enough, many of these phones also contain cobalt, yet another contact allergen. If you're allergic, symptoms can include eczema, blisters, lesions, swelling, and in extreme cases, using a BlackBerry can literally be a scarring experience. iPhones and Android phones, on the other hand, were found to be free and clear.
While many BlackBerries old and new have the offending metals, flip-phone models are by far the worst offenders, containing nickel a whopping 91 percent of the time. That's a pretty huge margin, but the fact that this hasn't been a huge issue yet probably means BlackBerries aren't out there ruining lives left and right. Still, if you've got a nickel allergy—or have been suffering from itchy, BlackBerry-face—it's just another reason to write off the suffering brand. More here.
The problem with little USB jump drives is that no matter how many you own, you've never got one when you need it. You could've have sworn you tossed one in your bag, but when it's time to pass files around, it's not there. That's why we're tempted to keep LaCie's new PetiteKeydangling from our keychains.
The PetiteKey comes in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB for $15, $23, and $40. It's waterproof down to 100-meters, scratch-resistant, and tough. There's a two-year warranty, should you want to test that toughness out. But best of all, it's much tinier than its cute-but-not-as-useful ancestor, the iamaKey: The little USB drive weighs 0.25 ounces and measures just 1.5 inches long. In other words, it's smaller and lighter than most actual keys, which means it's actually convenient enough to carry with your everywhere. More here.
One cow looks much like another, but some provide meltingly tender meat while others are as tough as old boots. Fortunately, a team of researchers has devised a series of DNA tests that can predict how good beef will taste by the time it hits your plate.
Usually the meat industry takes a bit of a punt on which cows will provides the tastiest steak. Sure, concepts like marbling and hanging method are decent indicators, but a team of researchers from the National Agronomic Research Institute in Theix, France, think they can do better.
That's why they analyzed 3,000 genes involved in muscle biology in order to pick out ones that have an impact on meat qualities like tenderness, flavor and juiciness. Then, having selected genes they thought were important, the team developed a DNA chip which analyzes gene activity in beef samples and can spot fundamental differences in their makeup.
They pitted the chip against a panel of expert tasters and it seems to work well. In fact it was in full agreement, and they found that the genes the device analyzed accounted for up to 40 percent of the variability in tenderness between different samples. The results are published in BMC Veterinary Research.
Of course, the researchers aren't happy yet: the team only uses a handful of genetic markers at the moment, and the test only works with certain breeds of cow. Still, the theory's there, so before too long you might be buying beef based on genetic ranking, not hanging time. More here.
Books, hahaha! Streaming video? Whatever. But wine, the blood of Bacchus, harbinger of groping and maybe more? Amazon—get dirt cheap bottles of wino sent straight to your door, you lush.
Starting today, anyone in California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and the District of Columbia can get up to six bottles in one order, with a shipping cost of just $10.
You'll have to get an adult to sign for your shipment at the door, and you can't get bubbly sent to an Amazon Locker yet—it's almost as if the company foresaw the interest of underage kids—but if you're a teen living in an apartment building with a doorman or front desk that signs for all packages, prepare to be swimming in gallons and gallons of cheap wine. More here.
As long as you don't take the sun into consideration, this 18th century contraption could very well be the world's first alarm clock that uses light as a wake up trigger, instead of sound.
A spring-loaded mechanism triggered by its built-in clock releases a flint-lock that lights a pop-up candle. So if you needed to rise before the sun was up, you didn't have to fumble your way out of bed in the dark looking for a way to light a candle. Brilliant! More here.
