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Like reported from Tech Crunch, Apple stocks go down at 11:56 till 12:02 PM period, 17 May 2007 local time. The decrease from US $107.89 to $103.42 is referred same as loss of market capitalization fund equal to US $4 billion.

Latter, Engadget is correct the news. That news in fact came from a fake e-mail, even though that fake e-mail looks original because coming from inside of Apple network. Apple stocks get restored in about 20 minute after the correction.

The news source represents an internal memo about the delay of iPhone and OS X Leopard launching. Michael Arrington, observer of 2.0 web sites, confessing that source in the internal memo form is a "gold farm" that usually wrong rarely. But in this time, that e-mail content is spurious although mentioned come from Apple server.

Even cannot be blamed, Engadget blog estimated will experience of the crisis belief from the reader. "In future if Engadget present the news kind like this, people will make the speculation concerning its truth. Need some time before its recover," said Arrington.

On the other side, Arrington noticed, Apple exactly can be blamed if the e-mail correctness comes from the internal network of Apple Company. "Other mistake from Apple is not immediately response the rumor after engadget post the news," Arrington enhance.

20/5/2007

Ken Kutaragi, 56, an icon among gamers, will resign as Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s chairman and group chief executive, Tokyo-based Sony said Thursday. He will be replaced by Kazuo Hirai, who is now president and chief operating officer of the division.

Kutaragi's most new brainchild, the PlayStation 3 console, came out in November but was marred by embarrassing production shortages and a $600 price tag that some Sony fans said was too precipitous. For the past some months, Sony has resorted to giving away free game titles and other marketing gimmicks to stimulate sales.

Sony has also struggled to enlarge beyond the young, male demographic of so-called "hardcore" gamers. Investors have been upset for several quarters that Sony has unsuccessful to magnetize women, young children and older gamers to its products, and its market share has shrunk as a result.

Problems connected to Sony's limited demographic came into sharp focus late last year, when Nintendo Co. launched a rival game console, the Wii, for about $250. The device which includes a diminutive, wrist-mounted controller and a console that's skimpy on realistic graphics has grow to be a surprise hit among girls, suburban mothers, senior citizens and other people who have never considered themselves gamers.

Sony shipped 1.84 million PS3s worldwide through Dec. 31. In the same time, Nintendo sold 3.19 million Wiis.

The defeat to competitor Nintendo prompted Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer to rocket his turnaround effort. In November, the Welsh-born executive — the first foreign-born CEO of a major Japanese electronics company — demoted Kutaragi by stripping him of day-to-day management tasks.

The leaving of Kutaragi — dubbed the "Gutenberg of Video Games" by Time Magazine in 2004 — will be effective June 19. After that, he'll be honorary chairman of the entertainment division and will serve as Stringer's senior technology adviser.

Although Kutaragi will stay an adviser, some U.S. gaming experts said the leaving may have been a face-saving firing and an effort by Stringer to recover from the failed PS3 launch.

AP

The nonprofit "One Laptop per Child" project said on Thursday it might sell versions of its kid-friendly laptops in the United States, reversing its earlier position of only distributing them to the poorest country.

"We can't ignore the United States. ... We are looking at it very seriously," Nicholas Negroponte, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology academic who founded the project, told analysts and reporters.

Once notorious as the $100 laptop, the lime-green-and-white devices are inching up in price. In February, the laptop projected said they would sell for $150 each. Negroponte now puts their price tag at $176 apiece.

They would go at a upper price to U.S. schools, he said, because more income are invested in American education than in developing nations, even in the poorest U.S. states.

The laptop features a string pulley to charge its battery, a keyboard that switches between languages, a digital video camera, wireless connectivity and Linux open-source operating software customized for remote regions.

Reuters

Mattel revealed Barbie Girls, a doll-shaped MP3 player that turns into a live character at BarbieGirls.com, a Web site where girls can relate with each other in a style reminiscent of Second Life, the virtual world for adults.

The company expects the new toy, which takes together Web surfing, shopping and music downloads, will cool require for rival MGA Entertainment's sassy Bratz dolls -- a line of big-headed, skinny dolls with scant, trendy clothing.

The world's major toy maker is also taking aim at Apple Inc.'s iPod music players and Ganz's Webkinz, wooly animal toys that come alive online.

The official launch of BarbieGirls.com came a week after the company gave it a public test run.

Toy analysts say this latest addition to the 48-year-old Barbie line should be a hot seller, helping the brand overturn nearly five years of declining sales.

MUSIC AND FASHION ONLINE

Revitalizing the Barbie brand has been a most important priority for Mattel, who has seen her former target audience defect not only to Bratz, but also to flashier, modern items such as iPods and video games.

The Barbie Girls music players, which can hold up to 120 MP3 or 240 WMA-file songs, come up to market in July and will cost $59.99, Mattel said.

At BarbieGirls.com, users can modify their characters' looks and styles. They can also go to the online mall and shop for clothes, accessories and furniture for their online room. Users can even adopt a pet.

But further importantly, Rice added: "I think parents are going to like the safe online portal."

To ensure girls' security in public chats, Mattel planed a limited vocabulary of 2,000 words the girls can use on the site, designed to prevent use of sexual language, vulgarity or upsetting words such as "stupid" or "hate."

Filters also stop users from giving out private information including names, phone numbers or even the cities where they live. Only in private chats with a "best friend" can a girl tell personal information.

reuters

Shipments of iPods raised 24%, to 10.5 million, in the quarter. A cellphone version, called iPhone, is due in June.

Mac shipments jumped 36%, to 1.5 million - three times the industry increase rate, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a report.

The results come a day after two former Apple executives were charged with offensively handling the backdating of stock options. Apple earned $770 million, or 87 cents a share, in its second quarter. Revenue soared 21%, to $5.3 billion.

It was Apple's most gainful March quarter, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said in a conference call.

Investors have mostly ignored Apple's stock-options problems, although there are remaining questions about Jobs' role.

USA TODAY

Bag Borrow or Steal Inc., a self-described Netflix for handbags, used Google's free Website Optimizer service to try to enhance the amount of people signing up for a newsletter.

"For our company, that's the foundation for our leads that we'll market to," said Mark Belanger, director of direct marketing for Bag Borrow or Steal.

Website Optimizer allows Web designers test different components of pages, including different elements such as headlines, images and calls to action. The optimizer automatically makes different mixtures of those elements and serves up the variations live. It then tracks how each page does.

"You can test two to 10,000 combinations, it depends on how ambitious you want to get and how much traffic you get," said Tom Leung, product manager for Website Optimizer at Google.

Google developed the service precisely to remove such deduction from site design, Leung said. "The problem we're trying to solve is really to sort of take Web page development out of the dark ages," he said. Typically, designers and marketers work together to come up with pages, using a "lot of guessing and a lot of intuition, which is often wrong," he said.

Beta users for Google Website Optimizer ranged from the very small corporation to larger organizations, including PC World, said Leung.

IDG News Service