Consumer confidence drags Wall St down

The Conference Board's index of consumer sentiment fell to 47.7 in October and revealed consumers are increasingly concerned about conditions in the US job market.

That news sent retail and consumer discretionary shares lower.

Profit-taking has also dominated overnight, after the market's recent run-up.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 14 points to 9,882.

The S&P 500 lost three points to 1,063, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gave up 26 points to close at 2,116.

Shares in Britain ended slightly higher with a rally in the energy sector offsetting weakness in banking and mining stocks.

BP's third-quarter profits halved, but it beat market forecasts by a fairly wide margin and its stock gained almost 5 per cent.

The pharmaceutical sector made reasonable gains ahead of third-quarter earnings from a number of big companies later this week.

A survey revealed British retail sales volumes grew at their fastest pace in almost two years this month.

The poll also showed retailers are feeling more optimistic about their prospects than at any time since July 2007.

By the close, London's FT 100 Index had gained nine points to 5,201.

The local share market is expecting a soft start - in futures trading, the Share Price Index 200 is down 21 points to 4,743.

The Australian dollar has eased to 91.5 US cents.

On the cross-rates shortly before 7:30am (AEDT) it was buying 0.6186 euros; 84 Japanese yen; 55.89 pence Sterling; and was worth $1.23 in New Zealand.

Spot gold has edged down to $US1,038.90 an ounce and West Texas crude oil is lower at $US78.80 a barrel.

Windows 7 is an all-ages show

My great aunt is 92 and, as of Friday, she's a Windows 7 PC.

Now, Hilda is already not your typical nonagenarian. She is frequently online, does her finances in Quicken and recently abandoned AOL for Gmail (something I still haven't gotten my parents to do).

Unfortunately, while her mind is quick as ever, her Windows XP PC had slowed dramatically over the past few years, becoming nearly unusable. It's one of those things that many find so irksome about Windows PCs.

In any case, Hilda (I'm sparing her some spam by not including her last name) decided she needed a new computer and I offered to help. It was just a day after Windows 7 had made its debut and we headed to a local computer store. I found her a basic PC, monitor, and printer for $450 after rebate. She didn't really need the monitor, but it helped me a great deal as I transferred all of her files from her old PC to the new one.

If it were still the Windows Vista days, I might have been tempted to downgrade her new computer to Windows XP, so she wouldn't have to adjust to the new operating system.

But, with Windows 7 working so well, I actually felt comfortable she could make the switch, even though she's at the other end of the age spectrum from Kylie.

It took me almost no time to set up the new computer, but several hours to transfer over her settings and documents and then re-install Quicken and her other programs.

Amazing techie that she is, it took her almost no time to adjust to Windows 7's new look and feel. It's a few days in and I'm glad to report that things have continued to be smooth.

"It really is not very different from the XP I used before," she told me in an e-mail this week.

Heritage Things

Heritage Things

Sonata inaugurates Microsoft offsite facility

Sonata Software, a provider in software services, today announced the opening of Sonata's second Offsite Facility (OF) for Microsoft at Sonata's new Global Village facility in Bangalore.

The new development center has been designed keeping in mind flexible, scalable and independent operations, said a press release.

The facility would provide design, development, testing, production and maintenance of Microsoft's products.

A Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Sonata engages with Microsoft over multiple engagement models, technologies, platforms and geographies. With Sonata's wide array of service offerings, the state-of-the-art facility promises to deliver high-impact solutions for Microsoft.

Inaugurating the facility, Hal Howard, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics, said, "Sonata has been a key partner for Microsoft in our commitment to provide best-of-breed 'People Ready' solutions to our customers. Sonata's deep domain knowledge and technical skills help us ensure accelerated development cycles, improved time-to-market and increased competitive agility."

B Ramaswamy, president and managing director, Sonata Software, stated, "We continue to invest aggressively to build capacity in order to serve our customers. This strategy allows us to quickly scale our organization, support the business demands of our global customer base, and further establish our leadership position in Software Product Development services."

He added that their relationship with Microsoft is an intrinsic component of Sonata's growth strategy and continues to provide significant synergistic opportunities for both companies.

Source & Credit: news.ciol.com

AT&T to allow VoIP iPhone apps on 3G network

AT&T on Tuesday said it has made the necessary changes to enable voice over IP iPhone apps to run on its wireless network.

Before Tuesday, VoIP apps would only work over a Wi-Fi network. In other words, if you wanted to use Skype to call a friend, you had to be connected to a regular Internet wireless network. Once you were out of range of that network, the call would end.

AT&T said it informed Apple and the Federal Communications Commission of its decision Tuesday afternoon. For its part, Apple was quick to react and make its own changes.

"We are very happy that AT&T is now supporting VoIP applications," Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris said. "We will be amending our developer agreements to get VoIP apps on the App Store and in customers' hands as soon as possible."

There are already quite a few VoIP apps available in the App Store, like Skype, Vonage, and Truphone, but they only work over Wi-Fi. Developers will need to enable the apps to work over AT&T's wireless network and then re-submit them to the App Store.

Of course, the application that everyone will be wondering about is Google Voice. Tuesday's decision may not have much of an effect on that situation because Google Voice isn't really a VoIP application. Google's app still uses your wireless network minutes, but the service does offer other benefits like receiving calls to a single number in multiple places.

Source & Credit: news.cnet.com

Amazon goes global with new Kindle

Amazon announced late Tuesday that it was introducing a new version of its Kindle e-book reader that can wirelessly download books in the United States and more than 100 countries.

The new device, which is expected to ship on October 19, is physically similar to the previous Kindle with a six-inch display. However, the new e-reader will be capable of downloading books and periodicals via wireless networks belonging to AT&T and its international partners.

"We have millions of customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books," Amazon.com Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. "Kindle enables these customers to think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds."

The online retailer also announced that it would cut the price of its U.S. Kindle by $40 to $259, bringing it more in line with Sony's Reader Pocket Edition, which sells for $199. The price cut is the second for Amazon's e-reader in four months: in July, the price of the Kindle 2 dropped from $359 to $299. Amazon also sells a larger version called the Kindle DX for $489.

The Seattle-based e-tailer said international customers will have access to about 220,000 book titles at its Kindle Store compared with the 350,000 titles available to U.S. customers. Publishers involved with the store include Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Harlequin, Penguin, Bloomsbury, and Hachette.

With the announcements, Amazon is attempting to position itself for a boom in e-reader sales that Forrester Research expects in the U.S. over the next few years. In a report to be released Wednesday, Forrester Research raised its 2009 forecast for e-reader sales in the United States to 3 million units from its previous prediction of 2 million sales. Forrester Research also expects Amazon's Kindle to command about 60 percent of the e-reader market in 2009, compared with 35 percent for Sony's Reader.

"This holiday season, eReaders will be one category that's a breakout success," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said in the report. "Lower prices, more content, better distribution, and lots of media hype are contributing to faster-than-expected adoption of eReader devices in 2009."

Source & Credit: news.cnet.com

IE overall usage slips, but IE 8 gains

All four of Internet Explorer's main rivals gained a larger share of users worldwide from August to September, new statistics show.

According to Net Applications, which tracks browser usage globally through a network of 40,000 Web sites and some statistical processing, IE slipped from 67 percent to 65.7 percent of users.

Firefox has steadily won over more users since version 1.0 arrived nearly five years ago, and it continued the trend with an increase from 23 percent to 23.8 percent. Apple's Safari rose from 4.1 percent to 4.2 percent, Google Chrome from 2.8 percent to 3.2 percent, and Opera from 2 to 2.2 percent. Although a few tenths of a percent may sound small, multiplied by the millions of browser users over the Internet, it can mean a large absolute number of people.

Firefox passed an important milestone over the month-long period, with the newer Firefox 3.5 replacing version 3.0 as the leading version. The newer version furthers Mozilla's ambitions to upgrade Web technologies with new features such as faster JavaScript and built-in video.

Microsoft has restarted what had been a somewhat dormant browser developer program, releasing IE 8 earlier this year. But IE 6 still is the leading version of Microsoft's browser, followed by IE 7 in second place.

In a bright spot for Microsoft, though, IE 8 usage increased from 15.1 percent to 16.8 percent, as IE 6 and IE 7 dropped.