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Oh, unboxing photos: how you whet our appetite for the devices we covet. We caught a glimpse of the AT&T destined Pre Plus being unboxed from the Boy Genius Report earlier this month, and this time around a slew of unboxing photos can be found by way of Engadget.  There’s nothing earth shattering here – just some pictures of  what appears to be a "practice" Pre Plus and its always attractive packaging – but these photos should stir some more excitement for those of us in the states that have been holding out for the GSM version of the Pre to hit our shores.

Thanks to everyone that sent this in!

A former New York City cab driver pleaded guilty in Federal Court to plotting to blow up the city’s subway system.

25 year old Afghan born US citizen Zarein Ahmedzay faces two life sentences and a $750,000 fine when sentenced July 30th.

During his court appearance, Ahemdzay wearing a government issued blue jump suit and surrounded by US marshals matter of factly described the failed terror plot. Ahmedzay’s high school friend and accomplice Najibullah Zazi pleaded guilty to similar charges last February.

In an emotional and at times bone chilling statement, Ahmedzay described how he, Zazi, and a third man traveled to Pakistan in August of 2008. He said the three made the trip to fight the “corrupt Karzai government” and to kill “occupying forces.”

He told the court after being denied entry into Afghanistan they were recruited by Al Qaeda to carry out “martyrdom operations in the US. Ahmedzay said his experience as a taxi driver was seen as especially helpful in selecting targets. He said all three men received light weapons training before returning to the US.

Back on American soil Ahmedzay said he had doubts about the plan but decided to become a suicide bomber. With his help the group decided to blow up New York subways traveling through the busiest stations in the city, Grand Central Station and Times Square.

The plot abruptly ended when the group suspected they were being watched by law enforcement. Ahmedzay said the chemicals used to make the explosives were discarded somewhere in the Queens borough of New York.

He told the court he was “ thankful I didn’t harm anyone,” but feared “someone else will do the same thing.”

He also quoted from the Koran and said he and the others were sent on the mission by “Allah.” He blamed the “Zionist Jews” for taking part in a secret government and called them the real enemies of the US.

Ford Start Concept at the 2010 Beijing Motor Show

At the world premiere of the Ford Start Concept at the 2010 Beijing Motor Show, FoMoCo confirmed that the new 1.0L 3-cylinder EcoBoost found in the concept is headed for production.

“This very real technology will come into production in the near future to deliver CO2 emissions of less than 100 g/km but power and drivability comparable to larger petrol I4 powerplants,” Ford said in a statement.

Ford also said that the Start Concept is more than just a design study and previews a future small car and Ford’s growing EcoBoost family.

“The Ford Start Concept was inspired by the world’s fast-growing mega cities and the unique needs and mindset of their inhabitants,” Ford said. “With heavy traffic, limited parking and fuel efficiency being key concerns among urban drivers, the Ford Start concept provides a vision into a future sporty, small-car package that meets a multitude of primary driving objectives, particularly among first-time buyers.”

Earlier this month Ford confirmed that it will offer a 1.6L 4-cylinder EcoBoost as well as a 2.0L 4-cylinder EcoBoost. All of these will join the current 3.5L V6 EcoBoost on the market.

Click here for our original post on the Ford Start Concept.

Ford Start Concept:

– By: Omar Rana

The times they are a’changin’……We mentioned this in a brief item featured in the Thursday night link roundup, but for those who may’ve missed it: Riverdale High is getting its first gay character.

Next September, Archie Comics will be introducing its loyal readers to Kevin Keller, the series’ first man-lovin’ alpha male.

(Sidebar: Are they sure they want to tag Kevin as Riverdale’s first gay teen? Have we forgotten about Jughead? I was devoted fan and reader of Archie Comics growing up (Quiz me!) and my gaydar clocked that Jughead during 100 MPH about 20 years ago. Certainly anyone can see that he likes his coffee very sweet.)

Described as a hunky blonde who defeats Jughead in a burger-eating contest, Kevin immediately catches the alway roving eye of raven-haired rich girl Veronica, which prompts Kevin to spill his secret to the compassionate ear of his trusted confidante Juggie. (What did I tell you?)

“It’s nothing against her. I’m gay,” he explains.

Jughead urges him to wait to tell Veronica, and hilarity ensues as Kevin wrestles with ways to rebuff Ronnie gently, the company said.

Jon Goldwater, co-CEO of Archie Comics, says the introduction of Kevin is “about keeping the world of Archie Comics current and inclusive.”

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Dan Parent, who wrote and drew the story for Veronica No. 202, which will hit comic book stores in the US Sept. 1.

“It’s not an issue like it would have been 20-30 years ago,” Parent explained. “We’re not trying to send social messages. We just want to reflect what’s going on today. Riverdale’s a melting pot.”

He added that people who are offended by seeing the Riverdale kids befriend a gay teen “aren’t the kind of people we want reading our comics anyway.”

Thoughts on this?

We give you a first look at the Sprint 4G Case for the iPad in this episode. Sprint, trying to capitalize on all the iPad buzz, and the fact that they are the first carrier in North America to offer 4G service, released this case as a method to push their Sprint Overdrive 4G mobile hotspot. You can get it free with purchase of an Overdrive device at Best Buy. You can also check out our written Sprint 4G Case review, along with the Sprint 4G iPad Case gallery.

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»  Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone has 72 percent of Japans’ smartphone marketshare. [BusinessWeek]

»  Lenovo may be a candidate for Palm (NSDQ: PALM). [Reuters]

»  Google (NSDQ: GOOG) says it won’t bring Google Maps Navigation to the iPhone. [Boy Genius Report]

»  How journalism is adapting to the mobile world. [International Symposium on Online Journalism]

»  Oprah is now officially mobile on iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm and Android. [Appolicious]

»  Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Siemens Networks begins LTE production for the 800 MHz spectrum band. [RCR Wireless]

»  MobiTV iPhone app has reached the 500,000 download milestone. [MobiTV]

The blog reviewed here is ‘Spread the Word. EMDR transforms trauma‘. In the about section, the philosophy underlying the blog is explained. The blog draws on the contributions of the wider EMDR community to highlight aspects of  EMDR ranging from successful application through to practical tips.

Appearance and Design

The background for the blog is dark blue with a central white pane. The title pane features a blue flower design with the title of the blog. Immediately beneath the title pane there are links to the home page and the about section. On the right hand side of the central pane lie the categories index, a search bar and links to external EMDR sites. The categories index features a limited number of categories and communicates the simple and effective organisation of the blog. Posts are comment enabled, dated and include category tags. They are typically text-based and a paragraph or several paragraphs in length.

Content

At the time of writing there are 13 posts in total. The introductory post stipulates that contributions should be a minimum of 200 words in length. This post by Dana Terrell sheds light on the origins of the blog and how she was introduced to EMDR. Several posts detail people’s experience of EMDR. For instance this post is about the use of EMDR for improving success at job interviews while this one describes an application in pain management.

Conclusions

This recent blog about EMDR contains 13 posts but already effectively conveys a lot of the enthusiasm of the posting EMDR practitioners. The posts are generally fairly brief but effectively convey useful information such as the application of EMDR in specific situations. This will be a useful blog to follow for EMDR practitioners or those with an interest in this area

Conflict of Interest

The author has undergone training in EMDR.

Call for Authors: If you are interested in writing an article or series of articles for this blog please write to the e-mail address below. Copyright can be retained. Index: An index of the site can be found here. The page contains links to all of the articles in the blog in chronological order. Twitter: You can follow ‘The Amazing World of Psychiatry’ Twitter by clicking on this link. Podcast: You can listen to this post on Odiogo by clicking on this link (there may be a small delay between publishing of the blog article and the availability of the podcast). It is available for a limited period. TAWOP Channel: You can follow the TAWOP Channel on YouTube by clicking on this link. Responses: If you have any comments, you can leave them below or alternatively e-mail [email protected]. Disclaimer: The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.

Extremophiles microbes: They’re tougher than you. Scientists have found microorganisms living in the ultra-dry Atacama desert, Antarctica, volcanic hot springs, and now, lakes of asphalt.

Trinidad, the larger island of the Caribbean duo Trinidad and Tobago, is home to Pitch Lake. This 100-acre pool of hot liquid asphalt is the largest of its kind on our planet, but microbiologist Steven Hallam thought it could tell us something about another world: the Saturnian moon of Titan. If anything could live in the toxic stew of Lake Pitch, he thought, perhaps there’s hope for the hydrocarbon lakes and rivers of that distant moon. He found that the earthly lake teems with life. “Water is scarce in the lake and certainly below the levels normally thought of as a threshold for life to exist,” he says. “Yet on average, each gram of ‘goo’ in the lake contains tens of millions of living cells” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation].

As you might imagine, studying samples of an asphalt lake is, well, unpleasant. The molasses-like goop got all over the lab, Hallam says, and because oil and water don’t mix, water couldn’t wash it off. “It’s somewhat nasty,” says astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University in Pullman, who led the field study. If the thick gunk gets on your clothes, he says, you might as well just toss them out [Science News]. Yet the team slogged through it, and submitted the findings to the journal Astrobiology. The researchers say that 30 percent of the organisms they found in Lake Pitch were previously unknown.

However, not all the mysteries around these microbes have been solved. The issue of unexpectedly low water activity still remains a question mark, Schulze-Makuch acknowledges. It is possible that the organisms whose genetic material they recovered could inhabit tiny reservoirs of water trapped in the asphalt samples [Christian Science Monitor]. For some scientists, then, the Lake Pitch inhabitants may not have as much to say about Titan as Hallam hopes. If the organisms feed on the hydrocarbons but live in tiny amounts of water, that would appear to be a much different situation than hypothetical life on Titan. There, presumably, life would have no water in which to reside.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: A Moon Full of Smust (Smust being the smog/dust combo that covers Titan)
DISCOVER: The Search For Aliens Gets Harder—But More Encouraging
80beats: New Evidence for Ice-Spewing Volcanoes on Saturn’s Moon Titan
80beats: Hydrocarbon Lake on Saturnian Moon May Be a Hotspot for Alien Life
80beats: New Takes on Titan Hints at More Fuel for Potential Life
80beats: Antarctica’s “Blood Falls” Shows How Aliens Might Live on Ice Worlds

Image: Dirk Schulze-Makuch,Washington State University

Phoenix radio station KFYI tweets that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed the controversial immigration bill, Senate bill 1070, into law. The state now has some of the toughest laws in the country that will, among other things, make it a state crime to be in the country illegally and require law enforcement officers to ask people they suspect of being in the country illegally about their legal status.

In 2003, Dutch businessman Pieter Hoff formed AquaPro, a firm which launched the “Groasis Waterboxx,” a device designed to enable trees and crops to grow in the driest parts of the earth. According to The New York Times’ Green Inc blog, the waterboxx, a kind of tree “water battery,” is about the size of a car tire and made from polypropylene. An opening at the center of the box provides a space for a plant or tree to germinate and grow.

The box captures both rainwater and condensation. Water is then collected in a space under the cover, preventing evaporation. The system is designed to help younger vulnerable seedlings get started in harsh growing environments. The box can then be picked up and applied elsewhere. “A wick inside taps into the ground beneath the box and drips a small amount of water to the plant’s root system each day. Once the plant or tree has taken root on its own, reaching a water source sometimes several meters below, the box can then be removed and used again to start another plant or tree.” 

AquaPro says their device enables farmers to plant trees or bushes in eroded areas, deserts, or other places where irrigation is impossible. ”In moderate climates the Groasis waterboxx causes 15 to 30% faster growth and thus more biomass.”

Hoff tested the device in the Sahara desert in Morocco for three years. Trees planted during the summer survived, demonstrating average growth of more than 90 percent in their first year.  AquaPro says “tests have shown that the trees, after the Groasis waterboxx is removed, continue to survive.” Just 10 percent of a small test group planted without the boxes lived on. Green Inc. adds that more trials are planned for 25 sites in eight countries. 

With water scarce in many of the driest areas of the world, tapping groundwater to irrigate young trees can create major consequences for communities who rely on small amounts of water. Hoff told Green Inc using groundwater to grow crops and trees doesn’t make sense. “Not only are traditional irrigation techniques inefficient because most of the water is lost to evaporation, […] but water can be easily captured from the atmosphere to grow just about anything.”

The boxes are designed to be environmentally and economically sustainable. Under development are new prototypes that will decompose over time, releasing nutrients into the soil. To create a sustainable business model, Hoff plans to offer a ”nonexclusive, free license”  to anyone who wants to build and distribute the device, asking for a royalty in return. To ensure his target audience — the world’s poorest, can afford the box, he wants to keep costs at a minimum and make the devices available through microfinance plans. Hoff told Green Inc: “My ideal is that the device is available to everybody, everywhere and my focus is to create a business model that enables the world’s poor to buy the box.”

The ultimate motivation for the device: worldwide reforestation, even in the most difficult and driest terrains. Planting trees can help create jobs, combat erosion, and mitigate the effects of climate change in developing countries.

Read the article and learn more about “Waterboxx”

Image credit: AquaPro

The Chemex defines clean coffee—the spare apparatus, and the actual brew it produces. Both timeless and starkly modern, it might surprise you that its inventor drove a Cadillac with a gold Chemex mounted on the driver’s door. [NYT] More »

Filed under: Concept Cars, China, Hatchback, Beijing Motor Show

MG has its eyes set on the juicy Chinese small hatch segment, and the company’s first crack at the market debuted in the form of Zero Concept at this year’s Beijing Motor Show. At shave over 13 feet long, the pint-sized five-door is designed to offer up more style than space. MG says the vehicle was penned by Anthony Williams, the brand’s British director of design, and offers drivers a unique interior loaded with your standard concept-tech. The Zero boasts a floating center console, complete with touch screen controls, as well as some kind of communication system on the rear of the vehicle. Yeah, we don’t get that part, either.

MG hasn’t said much about the vehicle’s details, including powerplant options, fuel economy or when we might expect to see a production version crop up. While we aren’t exactly smitten with the car’s nose, the rest of the design would do well in a segment dominated by the drab. Though concrete information is suspiciously absent at the moment, the company says the Zero should be a clear indication of where the brand is headed in the coming years.

Hit the jump for the press release.

Continue reading Beijing 2010: MG Zero Concept

Beijing 2010: MG Zero Concept originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[JURIST] Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) on Friday signed into law a controversial bill that would require individuals suspected of being illegal immigrants to present valid identification to law enforcement officials. The bill gives police officers permission to determine the immigration status of any individual who arouses reasonable suspicion, criminalizes the hiring of illegal immigrants for day labor, and allows citizens to sue the local government if they believe the policy is not being used properly. Brewer signed the bill despite criticism from US President Barack Obama earlier in the day that the measure, “threaten to undermine basic notions of fairness.” The bill will take effect in 90 days.
The bill was approved earlier this month by the Arizona Senate and the House of Representatives. Earlier this week, Brewer announced a new Arizona border security plan, and declared her support for a 10-point plan supported by US Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ). In 2008, Arizona voters defeated a ballot measure dealing with illegal immigrants. The initiative would have revoked the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Arizona is the most active border crossing point in the US.

In reporting on the two million people who have fled Iraq since 2003, Alisa Roth and I have been struck by the extent to which their experiences have eluded visualization. Unlike during other refugee crises, we have seen no columns of people on foot pushing their belongings in carts and wheelbarrows; no large camps with blue UN tents; no legions of starving, half-naked children gathered in dusty rural terrain. Instead, hundreds of thousands of ordinary, middle-class men and women—educated city-dwellers like ourselves—have fled from Baghdad and other Iraqi cities to similarly anonymous urban areas outside the country.

Perhaps because of this disconcerting ordinariness, the plight of Iraqi refugees has been a seemingly intractable subject for photojournalists; and the crisis has been all too easily overlooked by the press—despite the fact that the departure of Iraq’s secular urban elite may be one of the most devastating and lasting consequences of the war. Yet a few, including the Czech-American photographer Gabriela Bulisova and the Swiss-based Afghan photographer Zalmaï, both of whose images appear in our Review article, have been able to overcome this challenge. Some of Bulisova’s imaginative photo documentations of Iraqis who have been resettled in the United States—many of them struggling to get by—are now on view at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.

Zalmaï, whose recent, aptly titled collection, Silent Exodus, depicts Iraqi exiles who are stuck in the Middle East, offers powerful insight into these people’s uprooted lives—and their often remarkable efforts to cope with a situation that has no obvious end. The photographs in Silent Exodus were taken in 2007, during a series of trips Zalmaï made to Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, the three leading destinations for fleeing Iraqis. Pairing a series of portraits of families and individuals with brief first-person accounts of the events that caused each to leave, Zalmaï’s book, though slender, gets close to a number of the social and psychological effects of exile and the traumas that lead to it. “The basis of society in Iraq has been destroyed: there are no more teachers and judges,” a former schoolteacher tells Zalmaï. Taking the picture from above, Zalmaï shows the man’s reduced existence: he is sitting in a small, barren room in Damascus, his well-tailored shirt—a habit of an earlier life—clashing with the ratty towel behind him apparently standing in for a curtain and his head-in-hands despair.

Three generations of Iraqi women now living in the United States; photograph by Gabriela Bulisova from the exhibition The Option of Last Resort

In one image, a woman, evidently engrossed in the experiences she is relating, stares large-eyed at the wall—seeming to relive her shock—as she recalls the violence that forced her to abandon her country. Another portrait, among the most horrific in the series, shows a small, unclothed boy lacerated with burns suffered when his house was bombed; his father, who is holding him, has taken him to Amman in hopes of getting him medical treatment. But as with many of the Iraqis we met who survive in Jordan’s underground economy, they are afraid they will be sent back to Iraq. “I don’t dare go outside for fear of deportation,” the father says.

Yet the cumulative tragedy of these portraits is balanced by an equally forceful current of resilience that runs through many of them. An Iraqi woman, hanging laundry in a dingy airshaft in Syria, looks up almost joyfully at the shafts of light that have managed to penetrate this dark corner; a young boy watches with rapt fascination as a man works with a hammer and water sprayer—industriousness somehow persevering despite unemployment and (as we often found among the Iraqis we met in Jordan) lack of access to school; a girl in a dark Damascus apartment leaps into the air with such glowing force that the somber Iraqis watching her and the peeling room they are in seem almost to dissolve around her.

Indeed, we encountered numerous Iraqis in Jordan and elsewhere who had, notwithstanding the squalor of their surroundings, kept their clothes perfectly pressed and retained small things—a bouquet of plastic flowers, a cracked mirror, a framed photograph—as a way of holding on to some semblance of the life they had known. Conveying this with particular poignance, perhaps, is Zalmaï’s arresting portrait of an elegant middle-aged couple, both winsome and finely groomed, sitting together on a small couch: a composition infused with dignity and careful decorum. Yet on closer inspection, the man is missing his right arm, and their anxious faces are filled with resignation to a life of uncertainty, completely cut off from the world they knew.

Zalmaï’s collection of photographs, Silent Exodus: Portraits of Iraqi Refugees in Exile, is published by Aperture, with an introduction by Khaled Hosseini. Gabriela Bulisova’s photographs can be seen in the exhibition The Option of Last Resort: Iraqi Refugees in the United States, at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts through May 30, 2010.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) has announced that he will travel to Phoenix to oppose Arizona Senate bill 1070 at a rally at the State Capitol this Sunday.

From a statement he released today:

I am going there to let the people of Arizona know that they are not alone in fighting against bigotry and hatred and thousands will join me this weekend at the State Capitol. […]

I call on all justice loving Americans to join us in Phoenix. Join us in denouncing this law, join us in calling for its veto, and join us in standing up against hatred when people paint all immigrants and all Latinos as criminals. In so doing, we will be living by a fundamental truth articulated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We need to take a stand.

While many immigration activists are applauding his stand on Arizona’s bill, critics are saying he should mind his own business. From a Medill Reports article:

Closer to home, Gutierrez’s critics say it’s not his place to intervene in Arizona lawmaking.

“He should mind his own business,” said Rick Biesada, director of the Chicago Minutemen Project. “He should take care of his own constituents in Illinois. Why would he be concerned with Arizona?”

Others have gone further, claiming that the immigration policy Gutierrez advocates undermines U.S. sovereignty and amounts to thinly-veiled amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

“Luis Gutierrez is the poster boy for illegal immigration,” said Dave Gorak, executive director of Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration. “Gutierrez represents the interests of those who stop at nothing to prevent our government from enforcing its own immigration laws.”

Republican Governor Jan Brewer has to decide to sign or veto the bill by tomorrow afternoon — if she does neither, it will become law.

Update: Brewer just signed the bill into law.

Speaking of Trek, this is simply awesome.

And here’s the story behind it. You’re welcome.

A rare but potentially life-threatening tropical fungus is spreading through the Pacific Northwest, researchers have reported.

The culprit is a new strain of the Cryptococcus gatti fungus, and is known to have been lethal in 25 percent of the reported human infections. C. gatti usually only infects transplant and AIDS patients and people with otherwise compromised immune systems, but the new strain is genetically different, the researchers said. “This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people” [Reuters], says lead researcher Edmond Byrnes.

However, scientists aren’t sounding a public health alert because the death toll is still very small–in the United States, five of the 21 people who contracted the fungus in the have died.

The new strain of the C. gatti fungus has been found in both humans and animals like cats, dogs, and sheep, researchers write in the journal PLoS Pathogens. Because its such a rare infection, researchers warn that physicians could potentially miss diagnosing it.

C. gatti is a tropical fungus, normally found in Southeast Asia, Australia, and South America; it arrived on our continent in 1999 via imported plants or trees. In the past five years it migrated from Canada’s British Columbia province into the United States. The fungus is thought to live on the bark of about 10 species of trees, including Douglas fir and western hemlock. Epidemiologist Julie Harris of the Centers for Disease Control says the primary victims of infection have been people who spend a lot of time outdoors, often in contact with soil, and those who do woodwork and construction [Los Angeles Times].

Infection occurs when someone inhales the floating spores given off by the fungus. The spores are known to lodge in the lungs and cause a persistent cough and breathing difficulties, and have also been linked to meningitis and weight loss. But unlike bacterial or viral infections, this fungal infection isn’t transferable and can’t be passed from person to person.

Treatment for the infection includes a long course of anti-fungal medication. While the new strain is “highly virulent,” lead researcher Byrnes says there’s no cause for panic–just for vigilance. “Overall it’s a pretty low threat, and it’s still uncommon in the area, but as the range of the organism expands and the number of cases increases accordingly, it’s becoming more of a concern,” he says [CNN]. Epidemiologist Philip Alcabes, Ph.D told CNN that the emergence of a new, mutant C. gatti strain is “pretty normal” and that “it is an expectable evolutionary event in nature that has a slight amount of human fallout.” He adds that if this fungus follows previous patterns, its virulence should diminish eventually.

Related Content:
80beats: Spores in Mastodon Dung Suggest Humans Didn’t Kill Off Ancient Mammals
80beats: How the Frog-Killing Fungus Does Its Dirty Work
80beats: Fungus Behind the Irish Potato Famine Strikes the U.S.

Image: Duke University

It’s been a bad day for Blippy.com, the site lots of people hadn’t heard of until it managed to leak the whole credit card numbers of four users to the entire internet. Now, one of the four people whose digits are in the public domain has come forward to talk.

The Blippy user, a 38-year old firefighter, found out that his credit card number was public knowledge when people started Tweeting him the bad news.

“Luckily, it was only four people affected, but that doesn’t make me feel any better,” he said. “Just to see my name pop up on all these Web sites and to see all these articles written about it, it’s just a little shocking… It’ll make me think twice before signing up for anything else.”

As for how he ended up on Blippy, where people share info about what they just bought with their friends and the world, he recalled. “It was just one of those things that you sign up for and forget about until something happens like today.”

So far he says he hasn’t seen any fraudulent purchases show up on his account and — at least for now — he has no immediate intention to take legal action against Blippy.

Blippy Overshares, Reveals Credit Card Info [MainStreet.com]

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

What a difference 12 months and an accounting change make. As I briefly noted yesterday, only about $1 billion separated Apple from Microsoft results in the first calendar quarter. With so many blogs obsessed about when Apple’s market capitalization might exceed Microsoft’s, perhaps the focus should be on earnings.

Some people might not understand the significance. The comparisons here are real, because they’re not fudgy market share or market capitalization comparisons. Apple has closed a huge revenue gap on Microsoft and lessened the lead in net income. This year promises the most visceral competition between Apple and Microsoft ever.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced fiscal 2010 third quarter results: $14.5 billion revenue, $5.17 billion operating income and $4.01 billion net income, or 45 cents a share. On Tuesday, Apple announced fiscal 2010 second quarter results: $13.5 billion revenue and net profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 a share. Apple revenue is $1 billion behind Microsoft, while net income trails by a little less — about $940 million.

The year-ago comparisons show just how far Apple has closed the gap. A year ago, Microsoft reported 13.65 billion revenue, $4.4 billion operating income and $2.98 billion net income, or 33 cents a share. Apple: $9.08 billion revenue and $1.62 billion income, or $1.79 earnings per share. Apple revenue trailed Microsoft by $4.57 billion and net income by $1.36 billion. The bigger gap was obviously revenue.

In some ways, it’s an, ah, apples and oranges comparison. In fourth calendar quarter 2009, Apple changed its accounting to accomodate a new rule that lets the company realize most iPhone revenue in the given quarter. Before, Apple had to defer that revenue and recognize it over 24 months. Related, Microsoft still defers revenue from annuity licensing, which accounts for about 40 percent of total revenue. Apple gets a big bang that Microsoft defers. However, Microsoft typically realizes about 30 percent deferred revenue per quarter, making differences smaller.

Still, the $1 billion gap was unthinkable a year ago and unimaginable a half decade ago. In the same calendar quarter of 2005, Microsoft reported revenue of $10.9 billion, operating income of $3.89 billion and net income of $2.98 billion, or 29 cents a share. By comparison, Apple reported $3.24 billion revenue and $290 million net income or 34 cents a share. The difference between the two: $7.01 billion by revenue and $3.6 billion by net income.

Mac shipments are up from about 1 million units to 2.94 million units over five years (Note: Mac shipments were higher in other recent quarters). In first calendar quarter 2005, Apple shipped 5.3 million iPods compared to 10.9 million in calendar Q1 2010 (which was a decline from recent quarters). But the real difference maker isn’t rocket science: iPhone, which generated $5.5 billion during the recent quarter, or about 41 percent of total Apple revenue — and, of course, the accounting change helped.

The question: What will happen in second calendar quarter? Or even the third? Wall Street analyst consensus for Microsoft is revenue of $15.24 billion, with an estimate range between $14.59 billion and $15.91 billion. By comparison, consensus on Apple is $13.7 billion with a much broader range of $11.6 billion to $15.08 billion. However, Apple hugely beat the Street during the last two quarters — by $1.46 billion during fiscal Q2. It’s not a stretch of the imagination or reasonable speculation for Apple to close the distance during second calendar quarter or sometime later in 2010.

Second calendar quarter will be tough competing all the way around. The June quarter is typically Microsoft’s best of the year because of the larger number of annuity license renewals. This year, Microsoft has some spice for the mix: New products launching during second calendar quarter, including Office 2010, and ongoing Windows 7 deployments among businesses. However, much of the annuity licensing revenue will carry forward as deferred revenue.

Second calendar quarter promises to be big for Apple, too. It’s the beginning of back-to-school buying season, and Apple is banking on iPad and Mac — particularly the tablet — despite public budgets being crimped by the recession’s lingering effects on taxes. Apple upgraded MacBook Pros during the quarter, which should boost laptop shipments. If iPad sales are strong, Apple will likely get a revenue turbo charge but see net income fall. On Tuesday, the company warned that margins would fall to 36 percent from 41.7 percent, in part because of iPad.

Some people will point out that it’s just one quarter. What about the year? During calendar 2009, Microsoft generated revenue of $58.69 billion. Apple: $41.36 billion. However, for calendar 2010, based on one quarter’s results and analyst estimates for another, Apple has hugely closed the revenue and earnings gap on Microsoft. Because analyst estimates are for fiscal years and Apple’s and Microsoft’s don’t line up, 2010 forecasts are useless for comparison.

The news media, computer enthusiasts and pundits have railed about Apple-Microsoft competition for years. But for more than two decades Microsoft beat Apple by most every measure. Windows PCs may have the greater market share, but the measure is suddenly outdated. What matters with public companies is revenue and profits. Market capitalization is another measure, but also not a good one because of inflecting differences, like the number of publicly available shares from either company.

Microsoft has been hugely profitable, but now suddenly so is Apple, by comparison. For all the talk of Microsoft-Apple competition, it’s now starting to manifest in the most meaningful way for any public company: Money.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010