Lindsay Lohan's Day in Court: We Put Her Style on Trial

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01/30/2013 at 02:00 PM ET











Lindsay Lohan Court OutfitSplash News Online (2)


By now, we’re sort of used to Lindsay Lohan‘s antics, but it seems that we’ll never get accustomed to her unusual outfit choices. Case in point: the two very different (but equally eyebrow-raising) styles she sported within 12 hours this week.


First up, Lohan traveled from N.Y.C. to L.A.Tuesday night in an ensemble that has never been worn before on a plane — and with good reason. From her billowy leather trousers to her fur-trimmed leather jacket, we can’t imagine a stiffer, sweatier travel ensemble. Add a floppy brown hat and you’ve got a look that’s very Indiana-Jones-meets-Kim-Kardashian.


Then she showed up (on time!) to her probation violation pretrial hearing in L.A. on Wednesday morning in an outfit that mixed a courtroom-ready dress with a nightclub-ready heel. A marked improvement from her leather look, but still completely inappropriate for the situation.


The star has six weeks to come up with a better outfit (her trial date is March 18), and we’d be happy to assist in any way we can. Lindsay: call us! Tell us: What would you do to fix Lohan’s style?


PHOTOS: TELL US WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT MORE QUESTIONABLE STAR STYLE!




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Soldier looks forward to driving with new arms

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BALTIMORE (AP) — A soldier who lost all four limbs in a roadside bombing in Iraq says he's looking forward to driving and swimming with new arms after undergoing a double-arm transplant.


"I just want to get the most out of these arms, and just as goals come up, knock them down and take it absolutely as far as I can," Brendan Marrocco said Tuesday.


The 26-year-old New Yorker spoke at a news conference at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was joined by surgeons who performed the operation.


After he was wounded, Marrocco said, he felt fine using prosthetic legs, but he hated not having arms.


"You talk with your hands, you do everything with your hands, basically, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," he said.


Marrocco said his chief desire is to drive the black Dodge Charger that's been sitting in his garage for three years.


"I used to love to drive," he said. "I'm really looking forward to just getting back to that, and just becoming an athlete again."


Although he doesn't expect to excel at soccer, his favorite sport, Marrocco said he'd like to swim and compete in a marathon using a handcycle.


Marrocco joked that military service members sometimes regard themselves as poorly paid professional athletes. His good humor and optimism are among the qualities doctors cited as signs he will recover much of his arm and hand use in two to three years.


"He's a young man with a tremendous amount of hope, and he's stubborn — stubborn in a good way," said Dr. Jaimie Shores, the hospital's clinical director of hand transplantation. "I think the sky's the limit."


Shores said Marrocco has already been trying to use his hands, although he lacks feeling in the fingers, and he's eager to do more as the slow-growing nerves and muscles mend.


"I suspect that he will be using his hands for just about everything as we let him start trying to do more and more. Right now, we're the ones really kind of holding him back at this point," Shores said.


The procedure was only the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant ever done in the United States.


The infantryman was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He is the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War.


Marrocco also received bone marrow from the same donor to minimize the medicine needed to prevent rejection. He said he didn't know much about the donor but "I'm humbled by their gift."


The 13-hour operation on Dec. 18 was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Hopkins.


Marrocco was being released from the hospital Tuesday but will receive intensive therapy for two years at Hopkins and then at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.


After a major surgery, human nerves regenerate at a rate of an inch per month, Lee said.


"The progress will be slow, but the outcome will be rewarding," he added.


___


Associated Press Writer David Dishneau contributed to this story from Hagerstown, Md.


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Defensive stocks extend rally as caution sets in

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Tuesday, led by defensive sectors, in a sign the cash piles recently moving into the market are being put to use by cautious investors to pick up more gains.


The S&P 500 is on track to post its best monthly performance since October 2011 and its best January since 1997 as investors poured $55 billion in new cash into stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in January, the biggest monthly inflow on record.


Among rising defensive shares, which are companies relatively immune to economic swings, were drugmaker Pfizer, up 1.2 percent to $27.16 after posting earnings and AT&T , 1.5 percent higher at $34.64.


"Cyclicals were moving very nicely, now you see balance with some of the defensives. Many managers use that as an internal hedge in equity portfolios," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.


She said the market is cautious ahead of Wednesday's statement following the Federal Reserve's two-day meeting. In addition, defensive stocks would hold up better if Friday's payrolls report surprises on the downside.


The S&P hovered near 1,500, and market technicians say the benchmark is at an inflection point which will determine the overall direction in the near term.


"The public is pouring in now," said Carter Worth, chief market technician at Oppenheimer & Co in New York. "It reflects complacency and that typically leads to hubris, and hubris leads to trouble. Everyone's buying."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 70.27 points or 0.51 percent, to 13,952.2, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 6.62 points or 0.44 percent, to 1,506.8 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 3.52 points or 0.11 percent, to 3,150.77.


The top performing sectors on the S&P 500 were healthcare <.spxhc> and telecom services <.splrcl>, so-called defensives, both up more than 1 percent.


The energy sector also advanced, on the back of strong earnings from Valero Energy Corp and a hedge fund move to break up Hess Corp to boost investor returns.


Valero shares jumped 10.3 percent to $42.82 and Hess gained 8.5 percent to $67.80.


The equity gains have largely come on a strong start to earnings season, though results were mixed on Tuesday with Pfizer rising but Ford Motor Co down after its report.


Both companies reported profits that topped expectations, but Ford also forecast a wider loss in its European segment. Ford dropped 5.6 percent to $13.01 as one of the biggest percentage losers on the S&P 500.


Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 174 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings this season, 68.4 percent have been above analyst expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


Disappointing outlooks from Seagate Technology and BMC Software pressured their shares. Seagate lost 9.6 percent to $33.82 and BMC fell 8.5 percent to $40.70.


Software maker VMware Inc lost 21 percent to $77.71 also after a cautious 2013 outlook.


Amazon was the biggest drag on the Nasdaq with a 2.1 percent drop to $270.17 before its results, expected after the closing bell.


U.S. home prices rose in November to rack up their best yearly gain since the housing crisis began, a further sign that the sector is on the mend, but consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in more than a year in the wake of higher taxes for many Americans.


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Nick Zieminski)



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The Lede Blog: Under Attack, Cairo Hotel Sends Twitter SOS

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Video of unidentified men streaming into the lobby of Cairo’s Semiramis InterContinental hotel broadcast live on Egypt’s ONTV early Tuesday.

Last Updated, 2:56 p.m. As our colleagues Kareem Fahim, David Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh report, the mayhem on Cairo’s streets briefly spilled into the lobby of one of the city’s luxury hotels, the Semiramis InterContinental, during intense clashes between riot police and protesters along the Nile Corniche overnight.

Images of a mob streaming into the hotel, broadcast live on Egyptian television and then posted online, raised fears of further damage to the country’s already battered tourist industry. Coming at the same time as violence in cities on the Suez Canal, this week’s unrest threatened two of the main pillars of the Egyptian economy.

Judging by a series of urgent pleas for help posted on the hotel’s Twitter feed, the raid came just after 2:30 a.m. local time.

Within an hour of sounding the alarm on the social network, the staff reported on Twitter that the security forces had arrived.

Guards at the hotel told Bel Trew of the Egyptian news site Ahram Online that phone calls to the police and the army initially went unheeded as about 40 men armed with shotguns, knives and a semiautomatic weapon broke into the shuttered lobby and started looting.

An Ahram Online journalist who witnessed the attack, Karim Hafez, said that protesters had stopped fighting with the police to help secure the hotel: “When they realized these groups were trying to loot the hotel, protesters shot fire crackers at them as they attacked the building and tried to push them away from the area but these groups were armed with birdshot bullets.”

This reported cooperation of the protesters with the police officers they have been battling for days on the street outside the hotel prompted bloggers like the British-Egyptian journalist Sarah Carr to comment on the black comedy of the situation.

Another Egyptian blogger, Mohammed Maree, reported on his @mar3e Twitter feed that a police captain on the scene confirmed to him that the protesters who were fighting with the security forces when the raid took place were not responsible for the storming of the hotel.

Mr. Maree also reported that witnesses to the raid said it began after four people drove up in a car with no license plates and fired shots to scare protesters away, before storming the hotel. He later posted a photograph of some of the hotel’s guests leaving under the protection of protesters.

Nabila Samak, a spokeswoman for the hotel who posted the calls for help on Twitter, told The Times that the staff had called Egyptian television stations for help earlier in the evening, well before the attack, after appeals to the security forces for protection went unanswered.

Ms. Samak told Ahram Online that the staff worked to secure the hotel’s guests but were not equipped to cope with the effective collapse of the police force, since, “no guards of hotels in Egypt are armed.” Later she thanked protesters for coming to the aid of the hotel’s staff and guests.

A Saudi women who identified herself as a guest at the hotel, Hilda Ismail, posted updates and photographs from a shelter the guests were taken to during the incident on her Arabic-language Twitter feed.

In one message, she wrote: “If there is no Egyptian security, and if Morsi is sleeping, where are this country’s men!! Come get these dogs, the Semiramis Hotel is being ransacked and we are there.”

Later, Ms. Ismail uploaded a brief video clip of a man attempting to reassure guests that they were safe after the arrival of special forces officers from the ministry of the interior led by a Captain Moataz.

In the clip, the man tells the guests that the police captain wants “to assure you that the hotel is secured and it is under the control of the ministry of the interior now. Within no time you will go back to your rooms and already are in safe hands.” The police, the man added, “will make sure that such thugs will not enter the hotel again. We are sorry.”

Ms. Ismail also posted an image of the ransacked lobby on Twitter.

Ms. Ismai’s claim to have been a guest at the hotel was supported by the fact that she had uploaded a brief video clip, apparently shot from a high floor of the hotel, showing the fighting on the Nile Corniche below.

The luxury hotel chain, which was created in 1946 by Pan American World Airways, did not immediately reply to a request for comment, but an executive in Cairo told Al-Masry Al-Youm, an Egyptian newspaper, that “more than 45 clients insisted on leaving despite the hotel’s offer to relocate them to higher floors, away from the clashes.”

Although the hotel then announced that it would be closed for security reasons, the staff posted another urgent plea for help on Twitter late Tuesday.

Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim in Cairo.

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Apple announces iPad with double storage capacity

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(Reuters) – Apple Inc said on Tuesday that it will sell a version of its iPad tablet computer with 128 gigabytes of storage, which is twice the capacity of its existing models.


Apple, which has sold more than 120 million iPads so far, said that the new iPad will go on sale February 5, in black or white, for a suggested retail price of $ 799 for the iPad with just Wi-Fi model, and $ 929 for the version that also has a cellular wireless connection.






(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Two New Breeds to Compete at Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show

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01/29/2013 at 03:00 PM EST







Treeing Walker Coonhound and a Russell Terrier


Astrid Stawiarz/Getty


Looks like there will be some new furry faces at this year's Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

The American Kennel Club recently announced the inclusion of two new breeds for the 2013 competition, the Russell Terrier and the Treeing Walker Coonhound.

Per a description on Westminster's official site, new breeds are considered for addition when they've reached a significant number and distribution across the United States, as well as when a breed's parent club shows a growing interest.

Praised for being "athletic, intelligent, and fiercely loyal, the Russell Terrier is well-regarded for its hunting abilities, while the Treeing Walker Coonhound – bred to track and tree wild raccoons, hence its name – takes pride in its "clear, ringing bugle voice" and "intelligent, confident and sociable" nature.

Before these new breeds take their first bow at the show, to be held on Feb. 11 and 12 in New York City, tell us: Will you be watching?

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

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The first soldier to survive after losing all four limbs in the Iraq war has received a double-arm transplant.


Brendan Marrocco had the operation on Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday. The 26-year-old Marrocco, who is from New York City, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009.


He also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.


The military is sponsoring operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in the wars.


"He was the first quad amputee to survive" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there have been four others since then, said Brendan Marrocco's father, Alex Marrocco. "He was really excited to get new arms."


The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.


Surgeons plan to discuss the transplant at a news conference with the patient on Tuesday.


The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins, and is the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States. Lee led three of those earlier operations when he previously worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.


Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms, Lee said.


"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.


While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the novel immune suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.


Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants. Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it.


Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.


Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new minimal immune suppression approach.


Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities.


The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.


Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from a tube in his throat during the long surgery, decided that he sounded like Al Pacino, and started doing movie lines.


"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.


___


AP writer Alex Dominguez contributed to this report.


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S&P 500 slips after rally, but Apple lifts Nasdaq

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 edged lower on Monday as a four-week rally stalled, while a rebound in Apple shares helped buoy the Nasdaq.


Caterpillar shares helped cap losses in the Dow industrials even as the company posted a 55 percent drop in quarterly profit due to a charge connected with accounting fraud at a Chinese subsidiary and weak demand among its dealers. Caterpillar's shares, down 2.2 percent in the past three sessions, rose 1.5 percent Monday to $96.97.


The S&P 500 is coming off a streak of eight sessions of gains, the longest in eight years. On Friday, the major U.S. stock indexes closed a fourth straight week of gains with the S&P 500 ending the session above 1,500 for the first time in more than five years.


The rally has left the market vulnerable to a short-term pullback of up to 3 percent in the S&P 500 as bullish sentiment continues to rise, according to Richard Ross, Auerbach Grayson's global technical strategist.


"Still," Ross said, "we have a lot of momentum and nice seasonality, and technicals support the long-term bull market."


Data on Monday pointed to growing economic momentum as companies sensed improved consumer demand.


Thomson Reuters data showed that of the 150 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 67.3 percent have beaten analysts' expectations, which is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above the average since 1994.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 9.02 points or 0.06 percent, to 13,886.96, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 1.5 points or 0.1 percent, to 1,501.46 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 8.46 points or 0.27 percent, to 3,158.17.


Bargain hunters lifted Apple after the tech giant's stock dropped 14.4 percent in the previous two sessions. With Apple's stock up 2.4 percent at $450.29, the iPad and iPhone maker regained the title as the largest U.S. company by market capitalization as Exxon Mobil fell 0.9 percent to $90.94 and slipped back to second place.


"I think there is more downside in Apple if you did get a broad market pullback," Auerbach Grayson's Ross said.


"I'd be patient unless you're a trader. It might not be the most attractive entry point."


U.S. durable goods orders jumped 4.6 percent in December, a pace that far outstripped expectations for a rise of 1.8 percent. Pending home sales unexpectedly dropped 4.3 percent. Analysts were looking for an increase of 0.3 percent.


Equities have also gained support from a recent agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power. On Monday, Fitch Ratings said that agreement removed the near-term risk to the country's 'AAA' rating.


Hess Corp shares shot up 5.3 percent to $62.02 after the company said it would exit its refining business, freeing up to $1 billion of capital. Separately, hedge fund Elliott Associates is looking for approval to buy about $800 million more in Hess stock.


Keryx Biopharmaceuticals Inc said a late-stage trial of its experimental kidney disease drug met the main study goal, and its shares soared 67 percent to $5.75.


(The story fixes extraneous guides at bottom)


(Editing by Jan Paschal and Nick Zieminski)



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The Lede Blog: Images of New Clashes in Egypt, Two Years After the Revolution's 'Day of Rage'

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Last Updated, 2:47 p.m. This post has been updated throughout the day with reports from bloggers and journalists in Egypt, where protests and clashes continued in major cities despite an attempt to impose emergency rule.

As my colleague David Kirkpatrick reports from Egypt, there were protests in the Suez Canal city of Port Said and fresh clashes in Cairo on Monday.

Video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday showed officers firing at protesters in Port Said, killing four, including a man in a wheelchair, according to Mosireen, a collective of activist Egyptian filmmakers.

Video said to show Egyptian police officers firing at protesters in the Suez Canal city of Port Said on Sunday.

As clashes continued in Port Said on Monday, despite a declaration of martial law, journalists and bloggers there uploaded video of angry chants against the government at funerals for protesters and reports of escalating mayhem.

Video said to show the funeral of protesters killed in Port Said, Egypt on Monday.

In Cairo, police fired tear gas on Sunday and Monday at protesters at the foot of the Kasr el-Nile bridge near Tahrir Square, which was the scene of an epic battle during the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak exactly two years ago, on what was known as the revolution’s “Day of Rage.”

The activist blogger Omar Kamel shared dramatic photographs and video of the clashes by the bridge on Sunday, showing clouds of tear gas in front of the luxury hotels along the Nile Corniche illuminated by the protesters’ fireworks and lasers.

Video of clashes along the Nile Corniche in Cairo on Sunday night, posted online by Omar Kamel, an activist filmmaker.

The Egyptian newspaper El Watan uploaded video of clashes in the same area on Monday.

Video on clashes in Cairo on Monday, from hte Egyptian news site El Watan.

The Cairene blogger who writes as Kikhote uploaded video shot from above Tahrir Square on Monday that zoomed in to the foot of the Kasr el-Nil bridge, showing the location of the bridge and what looked like hundreds of protesters gathered there.

Video shot from above Tahrir Square on Monday showed the location of clashes at Kasr el-Nil bridge nearby.

Kikhote also drew attention to the activist blogger Rasha Azab’s photograph of a cloud of tear gas in the air above the heads of protesters near the foot of the bridge on Monday, in front of the distinctive salmon-colored facade of the Cairo Semiramis hotel.

Tarek Shalaby, another activist blogger, reported on Twitter that a couple of hundred protesters remained on the bridge, with dozens of officers from the Central Security Forces on the Corniche nearby, at about 2 p.m. on Monday afternoon.

A short time later, my colleague Kareem Fahim reported from the bridge that tear gas was being fired at protesters on the Cornche.

At abut 5 p.m. local time, Jonathan Rashad, a photographer, reported on Twitter that the officers had pushed protesters back from the Cornche on to the bridge and into Tahrir Square.

About two hours later, the Egyptian journalists Mohamed Abdelfattah and Simon Hanna reported from the Corniche that a protest march coming from the other direction had broken through the police lines just down the street from the Semiramis, and, after some fighting, the protesters captured a senior officer outside another luxury hotel, the Kempinski.

Witnesses also said that the protesters then took control of one police armored personnel carrier, driving it to Tahrir Square, and set fire to another.

At about 8 p.m. local time the A.P.C. that was driven into Tahrir Square by protesters was also on fire, as video posted online by the blogger Kikhote showed.

Video of an armored personnel carrier ablaze in Tahrir Square on Monday night.

As the 9 p.m. curfew imposed on Port Said approached, Rawya Rageh, a correspondent for Al Jazeera English, reported from the city that thousands of protesters had taken to the streets to defy the order — including the local soccer club’s most hardcore fans, the ultras, who were blamed for a deadly riot last year.

A blogger named Sameh Abd El-Khalek uploaded photographs to Twitter of what he said was the protest march on Monday night.

As the Egyptian blogger who writes as The Big Pharaoh noted, live television images also showed thousands of protesters breaking the 9 p.m. curfew in the city of Suez.

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Crucial, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

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TORONTO (AP) — The maker of the BlackBerry smartphone is promising a speedy browser, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone, the fruit of a crucial, long-overdue makeover for the Canadian company.


Thorsten Heins, chief executive of Research In Motion Ltd., will reveal the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday. Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices.






Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has nearly tripled to about $ 16.30 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.


Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability.


“The old models are becoming obsolete quickly,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said. “There is still a big user base but it’s going to rotate off. The question is: Where do they rotate to?”


The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people. Corporate information-technology managers like the phones because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage.


The BlackBerry has also crossed over to consumers. President Barack Obama couldn’t bear to part with it when he took office. Oprah Winfrey declared it one of her “favorite things.” People got so addicted that the device was nicknamed “the CrackBerry.”


But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. They can play games, music and movies. Android came along to offer even more choices. Though IT managers still love BlackBerrys, employees were bringing their own devices to the workplace — a trend Heins acknowledged RIM was slow to adapt to.


Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.


Even as BlackBerry sales continued to grow in many parts of the world, many BlackBerry users in North America switched to iPhones and Android devices. BlackBerry’s worldwide subscriber based peaked at 80 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 1, before dropping to 79 million in the most-recent quarter. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.


RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.


Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that.


RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today.


“Historically there have been areas that have not been our strongest points,” Rick Costanzo, RIM’s executive vice president of global sales, said in an interview. “Not only have we caught up, but we may even be better than some of the competition now.”


Costanzo said “no one else can touch” what RIM’s new system offers.


The new operating system promises better multitasking than either the iPhone or Android. Simply swipe a finger across the phone’s display screen to switch to another program.


All emails and notifications from such applications as Twitter and Facebook go to the BlackBerry Hub, a nerve center accessible with a finger swipe even if you have another application open. One can peek into it and open an email, or return to the previous application without opening the email.


“You are not going in and out of applications; you’re flowing through applications with one simple gesture of your finger,” Costanzo said. “You can leave applications running. You can effortlessly flow between them. So that’s completely unique to us.”


That said, multitasking will be limited and won’t allow for extensive use of apps side by side, as is typically permitted on traditional computers. If you’re watching a video, it will still run while you check for email. But it will pause if you decide to open an email and resume when you are done.


The BlackBerry’s touch-screen keyboard promises to learn a user’s writing style and suggest words and phrases to complete, going beyond typo corrections offered by rivals. See the one you want, and flick it up to the message area. Costanzo said that “BlackBerry offers the best keyboard, period.”


Gus Papageorgiou, a Scotiabank financial analyst who has tried it out, agreed with that assessment and said the keyboard even learns and adjusts to your thumb placements.


The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said it will release a version with a physical keyboard soon after that. That’s an area RIM has excelled at, and it’s one reason many BlackBerry users have remained loyal despite temptations to switch.


Another distinguishing feature will be the BlackBerry Balance, which allows two personas on the same device. Businesses can keep their data secure without forcing employees to get a second device for personal use. For instance, IT managers can prevent personal apps from running inside corporate firewalls, but those managers won’t have access to personal data on the device.


With Balance, “you can just switch from work to personal mode,” Papageorgiou said. “I think that is something that will attract a lot of people.”


RIM is also claiming that the BlackBerry 10′s browser will be speedy, even faster than browsers for laptop and desktop computers. According to Papageorgiou, early, independent tests between the BlackBerry 10 and the iPhone support that claim.


Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Papageorgiou said the initial group will include the most popular ones such as Twitter and Facebook. But RIM will have to persuade others to make a BlackBerry version, when they are already struggling to keep up with both the iPhone and Android.


Like many analysts, Papageorgiou recently upgraded RIM’s stock, but cautions that longtime BlackBerry users will have to get used to a whole new operating system.


He said RIM can be successful if about a third of current subscribers upgrade and if the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular. IDC said smartphone shipments grew 44 percent in 2012. If those trends continue, it will be possible for the BlackBerry to grow even if iPhone and Android users don’t switch.


“This doesn’t have to be the best smartphone on the planet to be a success for RIM,” he said. “I think the big question though is, if it fails, is it just too late? Are the other two ecosystems just so advanced that no one can catch up? That’s a big risk.”


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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