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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (560252)	4/12/2010 12:38:52 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1575847

Yes, I read that! About time!

To: Road Walker who wrote (560252)	4/12/2010 12:56:56 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1575847

Tensions Rise for Twitter and App Developers By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER nytimes.com ( A whole universe of which I know nothing. I don't tweet! ) SAN FRANCISCO — It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Twitter made it easy for programmers outside the company to build 70,000 applications that made the microblogging service more usable. Without them, people would not be able to post a photo, shorten a URL, monitor several Twitter accounts at once, easily use the service from a cellphone or search for people to follow. Because of that, Twitter grew so fast that no me-too company could mount a serious challenge. People now write 50 million Twitter posts a day, up from just 2.5 million at the beginning of last year and 5,000 in 2007. The outside developers did it all at no charge because Twitter allowed them to make money from advertisers or Twitter users willing to pay for apps. These programmers — who will gather this week in San Francisco at Chirp, Twitter’s inaugural developer conference — are starting to feel that life is getting a little more complicated. Serious tension was starting to develop long before the conference, where Twitter is expected to announce ways it will make money, which could include advertising or paid accounts for businesses. Developers fear that if Twitter’s engineers build the same features that they have, Twitter could transform overnight from generous benefactor to arch competitor to their start-ups. The tension is becoming more acute as Twitter matures and develops the resources and desire to buy or build its own version of some of the outside apps. On Friday, Twitter announced that it had acquired Atebits, which makes Tweetie for the iPhone and Mac, and that it had worked with Research In Motion to build an official BlackBerry app. That has other start-ups that make mobile Twitter apps wondering if there is any room left for them. “When we launched, Twitter was incomplete, so developers rushed to fill those holes, but eventually we’re going to have to build a lot of features in because they should be there,” Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive, said in a recent interview. “We want to set those expectations.” Fred Wilson, the Union Square Ventures partner who invested in Twitter and serves as a director, echoed that sentiment in a blog post last week that immediately put many developers on edge. “I think the time for filling the holes in the Twitter service has come and gone,” he wrote. “Twitter really should have had all of that when it launched or it should have built those services right into the Twitter experience.” Pete Karl is an engineer who builds Twitter apps at the Digital Influence Group and his own start-up called Lion Burger. “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” he said. “Before, I think developers had the upper hand. But now it’s time for Twitter to try and make some money, and I think they want to create a situation where the scales are tipped more in Twitter’s favor.” For the technology industry, this is a familiar story. Giving away technical secrets to those who want to use your product to build their own might seem counterintuitive to most companies, but it is a common path to success in the tech world. Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook have all, to varying degrees, opened their platforms this way. It can be a stunning source of growth. “Embracing the openness leads to ubiquity, and if you can embrace that ubiquity, you can make money,” said Mark C. Stevens, a lawyer for start-up companies at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley. But invariably, the provider and the developers bump against each other. “That’s how it always is when you develop for a corporate-owned platform,” Dave Winer, software developer, blogger and visiting scholar at New York University, wrote last week. “You have to make peace with that reality before you write your first line of code.” Microsoft, for example, became ubiquitous in large part because of all the tools, like memory managers, that outside developers built. Once Microsoft built memory managers into Windows, those start-ups became irrelevant. Twitter has been unusually free about letting developers tap into its data and technology, through what is known as an application programming interface. Sometimes it gives developers certain tools, like geolocation for Twitter posts, before it uses them on its own site, and developers can use the data and create a site or app without signing any contracts or even alerting Twitter. “The problems we’re solving are so big that we need a lot of people working on them and we need to give them the same level of access,” said Ryan Sarver, the director of platform at Twitter. If developers build something Twitter wants, the company has three options — let it exist separately, create its own version, or buy the start-up, as Twitter did in 2008 with Summize, which created a Twitter search engine, and last week with Atebits. “For every platform ever, it’s a question of what should be left up to the ecosystem and what should be created on the platform,” Mr. Williams said. Developers are rapidly learning that truth. Heypic.me is an iPhone app for posting photos to Twitter and to a Web site that shows Twitter photos on a map of the world. Twitter has been extremely open with its data, said Heypic.me’s developers, Andrew Seigner and Robert Manson. When the developers asked for more geolocation data, Twitter promptly gave it to them. But they are aware of the risks. “When you go to write a Twitter application, you almost wonder, is Twitter going to come out with the same feature in a month and blow me away?” Mr. Seigner said. Their fears were realized when Twitter built a similar site for the South by Southwest conference. They sent Mr. Williams a Twitter message asking if the site foreshadowed future Twitter sites. “If so, you have put us out of business,” they wrote. Mr. Williams responded that it was a one-off site. As with all relationships, the tension could worsen once money is involved. That is a concern for companies like CoTweet, a San Francisco start-up that offers tools for businesses to manage their Twitter accounts by tracking conversations with customers and letting multiple employees respond. Companies like Ford and Coca-Cola pay for the service. But Twitter has said it will introduce paid accounts for businesses, including a tool for multi-author accounts that was inspired by CoTweet’s. (CoTweet was acquired last month by the e-mail marketing firm ExactTarget.) Both Mr. Williams and Aaron Gotwalt, co-founder of CoTweet, said they were confident that companies would pay for both services, because they would also offer different things. Twitter has given some hints about where developers will have the most luck. Mr. Williams says Twitter has “a very complementary relationship” with start-ups like CoTweet that build apps for specific audiences. The need to discover people on Twitter and to search for the most relevant posts is so big that many people will be able to do it, Mr. Sarver said. Mr. Wilson, who said he was not speaking on behalf of Twitter, said that big businesses would also grow from social games on Twitter and sites that group posts about a certain topic, like movies or job listings. One of the goals of the Chirp conference is to shepherd developers in the direction that will be most useful to them — and to Twitter. “There are things that are not good opportunities that people will probably be disappointed if they invest in,” Mr. Williams said. “But we also think there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that we’re not interested in doing or have no plans to do.”

To: Road Walker who wrote (560252)	4/15/2010 2:01:18 PM
From: tejek	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1575847

Ford -- Europe's Top-Selling Brand in March COLOGNE, Germany, April 15, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Ford was No.1 in Europe for March with a sales volume of 192,500 vehicles Ford Fiesta sales at 68,800 were the highest for any Ford model on record in a single month in Europe Ford posted best monthly market share since August 1998 - 10.4 per cent in the main 19 European markets, up 0.4 percentage points on March 2009 Ford was No.1 in Europe in March with sales of 192,500 vehicles, a 16.1 per cent increase - or 26,700 vehicles - compared to March 2009, and the company's tenth consecutive month-on-month volume increase. Fiesta sales at 68,800 were the highest for any Ford model on record in a single month in Europe. Market share was at a twelve-year high of 10.4 per cent and the company's best share in its main 19 European markets since August 1998. "Attaining the No.1 position in the European market for March and being No.2 year-to-date - despite the continuing aggressive discounting we have seen from some competitors - is a great testament to the hard work of the Ford team and especially our dealers across Europe who have done an outstanding job in supporting and satisfying their customers," said Ingvar Sviggum, Vice President, Marketing, Sales and Service, Ford of Europe. "This success also underlines the confidence customers have in our latest range of excellent vehicles. With 11 all-new or significantly freshened vehicles and a wealth of new customer-focused technologies being introduced this year, our product range is set to becoming even stronger in Europe." Ford was the No.1 best-selling brand for March in the UK, Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands and Turkey, and increased its market share in 10 of its 19 main European markets. In the UK, where March is traditionally a strong month because of the registration plate change, Ford strengthened its market lead with 72,700 new registrations, up by 10,300 units or 16.4 per cent on March 2009. Ford was also passenger car market leader in Spain for the month. Commenting on the product highlights in March and the first quarter, Roelant de Waard, Vice President, Sales, Ford of Europe, said: "Fiesta continues to be an outstanding performer for us with 140,400 sold in Europe during the first three months of the year, and close to 70,000 sold in March alone. Globally, we've now sold over 750,000 Fiestas since the latest generation model was launched almost 18 months ago." Among other sales successes for March was the Ford Focus, which firmly underpinned its No.2 Ford sales position within Ford's main 19 European markets behind the Fiesta. Focus increased sales by 23 per cent. Sales of the Ford Ka rose by 27 per cent in March, while Kuga sales increased by more than a third compared to March 2009. Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, Ford of Europe's Vice President for Legal, Governmental and Environmental Affairs, said: "Ford has had a great March and first quarter sales performance, but we can expect some further challenges in the months ahead as more scrappage schemes are phased out." "We understand fully that there will not be another round of scrappage incentives but we do ask that governments consider other sales incentives, in particular to encourage small and medium sized enterprises. For example, tax breaks for commercial vehicles would not only benefit smaller companies but the wider economy and automotive industry as well," Dr. Schneider said. In the first quarter of 2010, Ford registered 391,100 vehicles in its 19 European markets, 32,600 units or 9.1 per cent more than in 2009. Total industry was up 9.2 per cent. Market share in the main 19 European markets was 9.4 per cent, remaining unchanged when compared with the same period in 2009, and confirming Ford as the No.2 best-selling brand in Europe for the first quarter this year. Ford's share rose in seven of its main 19 European markets for the first quarter of 2010. Ford of Europe sold 212,200 new vehicles in March and 431,900 year-to-date across its 51 markets. Compared to 2009, these sales were 12.7 and 4.7 per cent higher, respectively. Notes to Editors: Ford of Europe's market share refers to the 19 European markets (Euro 19) - excluding Turkey and Russia (as the other main markets) and excluding the 30 European Direct Markets (EDM), where we base our share on non-domestic sales volume and hence no total industry share figures are available. Sales data (reference: registrations) for specific car lines refer to Euro 19. We also report our sales performance (passenger cars and commercial vehicles) for the total region for which Ford of Europe is responsible (51 markets in total), here however as retail sales (as total industry registrations numbers are not available). The Euro 19 markets are: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Ford reports sales for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania through our Finnish National Sales Company, so sales data for the Baltic states is also included within Euro 19. European Direct Markets are: Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Georgia, Gibraltar, Kazakhstan, Kyrgysztan, Libya, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Tunisia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan Ford of Europe is responsible for producing, selling and servicing Ford brand vehicles in 51 individual markets and employs approximately 66,000 employees. Also in 2009, Ford was Europe's No.2 best-selling vehicle brand. In addition to Ford Motor Credit Company (F, Trade ), Ford of Europe operations include Ford Customer Service Division and 22 manufacturing facilities, including joint ventures. The first Ford cars were shipped to Europe in 1903 - the same year Ford Motor Company was founded. European production started in 1911. SOURCE Ford prnewswire.com