California Vacation Packages - 5 Reasons Why The iPhone 5c Might Be a Flop

Source      - http://www.zdnet.com/
By            - Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
Category  - California Vacation Packages
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

California Vacation Packages

Rumors are circulating that Apple is cutting orders for the iPhone 5c in the face of weak demand, and this in turn is fueling speculation that the handset might be a misstep by the Cupertino giant.

But if the iPhone 5c ends up being a flop, what's behind the failure?

First off, I think that it is far too early to call the iPhone 5c a flop. Even if Apple is cutting orders, this could be part of the normal scaling back that happens following a launch as Apple re-evaluates the supply chain and balances things out. This sort of thing is normal.

Apple likes there to be as short a gap as possible between stuff coming off the assembly line, and that stuff being sold, and strives to have around 4 to 6 weeks of channel inventory. Given that iPhone 5c handsets (of all colors) are shipping within 24 hours, while the higher-priced flagship iPhone 5s is on 2 to 3 week back order, it makes sense for Apple to concentrate more on the iPhone 5s.

Another point worth bearing in mind is that we are unlikely to ever find out the sales figures of the individual handset models as Apple only reports data on iPhone sales as a whole. So if iPhone 5c sales are poor, but this is offset by strong iPhone 5s sales (and there's data to suggest that the latter is outselling the former by a significant margin) then the overall effect on sales will be hard to notice. Pundits and analysts like to focus on iPhone sales figures, but revenue and margin data are more telling and as a rule are better indicators of the health of the product line.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that a lot of people who buy handsets are locked into contract and upgrade cycles, and this could mean a delayed or extended upgrade cycle that extends well beyond the initial release. This may be doubly so for the non-flagship handset where consumers might be unwilling to pay unlocked prices to get their hands on the phone and instead wait until they are eligible for a subsidized upgrade.

But, if despite all I've said above, the iPhone 5c is judged to be a flop, what could be the reason behind it being a flop? Here are five possible reasons why.

1) Old model in new clothes

While the iPhone 5c is undeniably a new handset, under the shiny polycarbonate shell it is essentially a rebadged iPhone 5. While it is unquestionably an upgrade for anyone running a non-retina display iPhone, for those already owning an iPhone 4s or iPhone 5, there's not much new beyond the color.

2) No sane color option

The iPhone 5c comes in white, pink, yellow, blue, and green, there's no subdued black/charcoal/space grey option. Given that a black (or a variant on black) has always seemed to be the most popular choice of finish, the fact that it is not on offer might be putting a damper on sales.

On top of that, the lack of a red option is particularly surprising, especially given Apple's desire to gain a foothold in the Chinese market (red is a color traditionally seen as symbolizing good fortune).

3) Stuck with one color

You can dress up the iPhone 5c is different colored silicone skins (at $29 a pop) or you can use third-party cases, but as to the actual color of your handset, you're stuck with it for the duration of ownership.

For the trendy or teens with short attention spans, this is a concept that might not float.

As an aside, the most popular color in the UK according to iPhoneStockChecker is pink, accounting for 46 percent of sales, followed by blue at 32 percent, and green at 12 percent. White is low down the list at 9 percent, and the yellow version seems to be the ugly duckling, only chosen by one out of every 100 buyers.

4) Price shock

Apple lists an unlocked 16GB iPhone 5c at $549, which is only $100 less than a 16GB iPhone 5s. You can pick up unlocked handsets for less than this, but that high official price – which got a lot of press attention at the iPhone unveiling – will have undoubtedly put some people off.

5) Second best

The popular perception is that iPhone buyers are swayed by style, and that owning the attest and greatest handset is a status symbol of sorts.

While there no denying that the iPhone 5c is a new handset, it isn't a flagship handset, and with so much attention focused on the iPhone 5s, does this make the iPhone 5c seems a lesser, inferior, second best purchase?

The bottom line

Apple CEO Tim Cook is on record as saying that the company doesn't fear cannibalization, and that extends as far as its own products cannibalizing one another. At the end of the day, whether consumers are buying the iPhone 5s or the iPhone 5c (or the older iPhone 4s), people are still buying an Apple product as opposed to the competition.

If the iPhone 5c is a viable product, then chances are that we'll see similar models coming down the pipe in the future, if not, then we may see Apple shift away from this approach. This is how businesses do business.

Hotels In Northern California - Facebook Changes Privacy Settings For Teens

Source      - http://edition.cnn.com/
By            - Heather Kelly
Category  - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

 

Hotels In Northern California

Facebook is relaxing its rules for teenagers. The 13- to 17-year-old set now has the option to share photos, updates and comments with the general public on Facebook. That means strangers, and companies collecting data for advertisers and marketing companies, will be able to see select posts. Strangers will also be able to "follow" teens they don't know and see their public posts in the main news feed.

The changes will take effect immediately, the company announced in a blog post. The new setting might help Facebook compete against other social networks that skew younger, and having public data on teens will also help the company appeal to advertisers.

The social network is trying to balance the less strict settings with two other privacy protections. When new underage users sign up for a Facebook account, their posts will be shown to a more limited audience by default -- only to friends instead of friends of friends. If a teen decides to change the setting to Public, she or he will see a pair of pop-up warnings explaining what "public" means. One warns they could end up "getting friend requests and messages from people they don't know personally." Default settings for existing teens with profiles won't change or affect past posts.

Facebook has been around for more than nine years and stopped being a hip place for kids long ago when it was invaded by parents, grandparents and advertisers. It has 1.2 billion users. Even as it expands to all ages, the company has to work to hang on to the coveted teen demographic.

In a recent Pew study, teens reported "waning enthusiasm" for the social network, citing the presence of adults and drama. The site has become too important to typical teen life to abandon, so 94% of teens on social media have a Facebook account, and the average teen user has 300 friends.

Other social networks such as Twitter, Tumblr and Last.fm don't prevent teens from posting publicly. However, if someone under 18 wanted to bypass the setting on Facebook before today, they could easily lie about their age when signing up for an account. Children under 13 are not officially allowed to sign up for a Facebook account, though they can skirt the rules in the same way. When someone underage does sign up for an account, Facebook assumes they have the permission of at least one guardian but does not verify it in any way.

Santa Clarita Local Colleges - Samsung Touching Up ROUNDED, CURVY Plastic Enhanced MODEL

Source       - http://www.theregister.co.uk/
By             - Bill Ray
Category   - Santa Clarita Local Colleges
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Santa Clarita Local Colleges

Samsung has launched what it describes as the "world's first curved display smartphone", the Galaxy Round.

This is despite the fact that Samsung built the last phone with a curved screen only three years ago.

You can't get your hands on one yet, though – the new handset, which has a flexible 5.7-inch high-def display, is only available in South Korea.

The first curved phone, of course, was the Nexus S, and was described as "contoured" with a glass screen bowing lengthways to wrap towards the user's mouth like an EU-Approved banana*, while the Galaxy Round wraps sideways to provide no discernible utility at all.

Samsung's press release says very little about the hardware, beyond the fact that the Galaxy Round seems to be a variant in the Galaxy Note with a couple of new functions added to take advantage of the curved back. Most importantly, it doesn't say from what material the new screen is constructed.

The Nexus S used a glass screen, curved, but the Round's camber is much sharper and would seem to indicate the use of plastic which might justify the "world's first" tag.

Just yesterday, LG announced that it had started manufacturing screens based on plastic, which can be flexible but more usefully are fixed to curved surfaces, and Samsung has been playing with the technology recently too, making plastic the probable basis for the Galaxy Round.

That makes the product a proof-of-concept, unlikely to sell outside Korea and unlikely to sell in any significant quantities within it, but it will serve to prove that Samsung can make plastic screens, in large quantities and with a yield rate high enough to make the technology viable, which is what the Galaxy Round is really all about.

Hotel In Santa Clarita - Samsung Debuts World's First Curved Display Smartphone

Source       - http://news.cnet.com
By             - Dara Kerr
Category   - Hotel In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel In Santa Clarita

Samsung has won the race to be the first phone manufacturer to launch a flexible smartphone. The company announced late Tuesday evening that the Galaxy Round incorporates the latest in flexible screen technology, along with other unique features.

The device resembles the Galaxy S3 and S4, but it has slight dip in the middle that causes the phone to curve along a vertical axis. The phone's body itself is rigid, so it doesn't exactly flex or bend -- but rather has a stationary curve that is said to fit the contours of a person's face. The company says that this curvature lets users controls their apps, music, and photos more easily.

"As a result of its unique curved design, users can take advantage of round integration experiences like the Roll Effect that enables user to check information such as date, time, missed call and battery easily when home screen is off, and the Gravity Effect for creating visual interaction with the screen by tilting the device," Samsung wrote in a statement. "When the Galaxy Round's display is off while the music player is running, a short press to the left of the device will play the previous track while a short press to the right will play the next track. For pictures and videos, the Side Mirror feature enables users to gain access to list of the album content with a left and right tilt."

The Galaxy Round has a 5.7-inch 1080p screen that has an HD Super AMOLED display. The device is 7.9mm thick, weighs 154g, and has a 2800mAh battery. It runs Android 4.3, has 3GB of RAM, and a 2.3GHz quad-core processor. The smartphone also has a 13-megapixel camera

Rumors have been floating the last few weeks that Samsung was working on a flexible display smartphone; and photos of the device even leaked on the Web earlier today. 

The product release comes as Samsung faces a slowdown in its core smartphone market. This means the company must find other ways to wow buyers and get them to pay for new devices. A curved display could be one factor that attracts those consumers.

Curved displays, however, are not entirely new to the market. Nokia and Apple have reportedly been working on curved displays for years, and LG recently announced that it plans to launch its first bendable smartphone dubbed the G Flex within a few weeks.

The Galaxy Round will first launch in South Korea in "Luxury Brown" and more colors are forthcoming. It's not yet clear when the company plans to launch the smartphone internationally.

Vacations In Santa Clarita - To Live a Longer, Healthier Life: Delay Aging, Don’t Just Cure Disease

Source       - http://www.washingtonpost.com/
By              - Tara Bahrampour
Category    - Vacations In Santa Clarita
Posted By   - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Vacations In Santa Clarita

Delaying aging and the infirmities associated with old age would make populations healthier overall and could save trillions of dollars over the next five decades, a new study says.

While research has focused largely on diseases such as cancer or heart disease, the elimination of these diseases would have less effect on longevity and quality of life than delaying aging itself, according to the study, which appears this month in Health Affairs. 

This is because older people tend to suffer from a combination of ailments brought on by aging, said the study, which was conducted by scientists from the University of Southern California, Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and other institutions.

“When we treat someone with cancer, or heart disease, or stroke, we are treating a manifestation or byproduct of biological aging -- the underlying process marches on unaltered by this approach to disease,” said Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago and a co-author of the study.

“This means that even if we succeed for a time in extending life by treating disease, either that disease or another will emerge with time….Slowing aging alters the risk of all diseases simultaneously by attacking the origins of all of the things that go wrong with us as we grow older.”

The study cited research into the genetics of centenarians and animal studies of caloric restriction, as well as hormone manipulation, altering insulin-signaling pathways, and removal of senescent cells as showing potential for delaying the aging process.

The study coincides with Google’s September announcement that its next startup, Calico, will focus on delaying aging and extending the human lifespan. Another California-based company, SENS research foundation, also seeks to repair the damage done in the aging process.

Currently, a long life does not necessarily mean a healthy life; disability rates have increased along with life expectancy, the study said. The current population of young Americans is expected to have higher incidences of health problems like obesity and diabetes than their older counterparts, according to projections using federal data.

The number of Americans over 65, now around 43 million, is expected to more than double in the next fifty years, to 106 million. Around 28 percent are currently disabled, and the decades-long gains in the functional status of older Americans ended in 2002, the study said.

Even modest scientific advancements in delayed aging would result in an additional 11.7 million healthy people over 65 by 2060, according to the study. It would also raise life expectancy by around 2.2 years.

Delaying aging would be costly because of longer entitlement outlays, but the study said that the costs could be offset by raising the age for official Social Security retirement and Medicare eligibility to 68. It also predicted that delaying aging could save $7.1 trillion in the next fifty years, as people stay in the workforce longer and live without having major medical expenses associate with aging.

Budget Hotels Santa Clarita - Is Samsung Overly Reliant On Smartphones?

Source       - http://english.chosun.com/
By             - Press Release
Category   - Budget Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Budget Hotels Santa Clarita

Samsung Electronics achieved record earnings in the third quarter of this year, but experts warn that the smartphone market faces huge risks. The biggest problem is Samsung's dangerously high reliance on smartphones to drive up revenues.

Although the electronics giant did not reveal earnings by individual business division, analysts believe the mobile division, which includes smartphones, accounts for 65 percent of total quarterly operating profit of W10.1 trillion (US$1=W1,070).

In turn, Samsung Electronics accounts for 66 percent of the entire Samsung Group's revenues. That means that slow smartphone sales could rattle the entire group badly. Experts warn that Samsung must come up with new growth engines for a time when the global smartphone market is saturated. Otherwise it could go the way of former rivals Nokia and Blackberry.

Samsung is confident that its strong performance in the smartphone market will continue. Sales of the Galaxy S4 remain strong, and those of the Galaxy Note 3 released recently will be reflected in fourth-quarter earnings, according to the company.

But market conditions are not entirely favorable. Market growth for premium smartphones is slowing, and Chinese rivals are catching up quickly in low- and mid-priced phones, which have the strongest growth potential in the years ahead.

Even Apple, which stuck to high-end phones for years, has started to sell mid-priced phones as well.

It remains to be seen whether Samsung can meet its target of selling 100 million Galaxy 4Ss, said Kim Ji-woong at E*trade Securities. He said analysts lowered their earnings expectations for Samsung Electronics, triggering its share price and market cap to fall. In June, JP Morgan lowered its smartphone output forecast for Samsung, causing the company's market cap to decline by W15 trillion in a single day.

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita - iPhone 5s Review: A Great Phone With Some More Forward Thinking Needed

Source       - http://gma.yahoo.com/
By             - JOANNA STERN
Category   - Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hampton Hotels Santa Clarita

"Forward thinking." That's the tag line you'll find splattered across Apple's iPhone 5s billboards or commercials. "It's not just what's next. But what should be next," the company writes about its latest phone on its website. 

It's Apple marketing at its best -- flowery, affirmative, well-crafted phrases -- but on paper the phone is really just a set of updated specs from its previous iPhone 5. The iPhone 5s packs only three new noteworthy features: a faster 64-bit processor, an improved camera and flash, and a new fingerprint sensor. Oh, and, of course, there's that new gold color choice. 

But when those features are combined with the iPhone 5s' beautiful aluminum design and high-quality Retina display, does the phone really pave the way for the future of smartphones? Does it set a new bar for the hundreds of other phones that will be released this year? Or is it just an example of darn good marketing?

The Good Changes
I can tell the difference between my iPhone 5s review unit and my own iPhone 5 in two ways -- the gold, shimmering hue on the back and the golden ring around the home button of Apple's 5s. 

Yes, the phone has the same elegant design as the 5, though that shouldn't bother anyone. It is still one of the most beautiful gadgets ever created. The only phone this year to even try to overshadow the iPhone's design and craftsmanship has been the HTC One. Just that one phone out of an interminable number of Android and Windows phone devices even came close to matching Apple's design prowess.

But where the iPhone 5s begins to show its first signs of forward thinking is with the fingerprint sensor now embedded in its home button. Called TouchID, the technology works just as Apple promised. Register up to five fingerprints, tap on the button and you're logged on to the phone. No need to input a password or swipe to unlock.

It works extremely well, which is not something always said about fingerprint technology. Just try some of the ones on a Windows laptop, and you'll know that constant pop-ups and other malfunctions stand in the way of it being a seamless experience. That's not the case with Apple's solution, and it makes logging on to the phone much faster than entering a PIN or password.

The phone itself is also faster, or at least that's what Apple's 64-bit A7 chip promises. While some apps and games, including Infinity Blade 3 and Sing! Karaoke, have been built to take advantage of the processor, and the improvement over the iPhone 5 is clear when it comes to everyday activities such as launching apps or surfing the web, I haven't noticed a difference. Still, this is one fast phone; you'll be hard pressed to find lag, and it will give you the power you need in the years to come. Future thinking, indeed.

The Camera
Apple says more apps will be on the way to take advantage of the faster silicon, but its own camera app is already tapping into that speed, including the slow-mo and burst mode features. Both of the new features are really fun to play with and add a lot to the already top-notch camera experience.

And the improved camera sensor, which now captures more light, might be the biggest upgrade for most people. When it comes to performance in darker settings, especially in dimly lit restaurants, shots are noticeably better and clearer when taken with the 5s than with the iPhone 5 or 5c. Even photos I took on a bright sunny day seemed to look crisper.

The iPhone 5s' camera is one of the main reasons to buy this phone over any other out there. Yes, the Nokia Lumia 1020's 41-megapixel camera takes great shots, but it is a very chunky phone. And while the Galaxy S4 and HTC One take good shots, they do not capture photos as well balanced and crisp as the ones taken with the iPhone 5s. It's simply worth it for the better Instagrams alone.

The Non-Changes
All those aforementioned changes keep Apple's iPhone ahead of the pack in very crucial ways, but there are some other places where the case for the most forward-thinking phone hasn't been made.

The first is with battery life. Apple said users of the iPhone 5s should see a 25 percent bump in endurance, but I haven't experienced that. It could be some of the early iOS 7 battery problems, but I still have been getting a little less than a full day of juice -- about 10 hours or so. Some Android phones, such as the Moto X, seem to last at least 20 percent longer, although they are thicker and not as well-designed as the iPhone. We have come a long way since the first iPhone's five or so hours of battery life, but I haven't given up on a smartphone future that does away with ugly battery cases.

And then there is the screen. I'll be the first to admit that a 5.5-inch or 6.3-inch screen is overload for a smartphone, but there are times now when I feel the 4-inch display on the iPhone is too cramped. The Moto X's 4.7-inch display seems to be the ideal blend of screen real estate and manageability.

Lastly there is the software. Despite some people having problems adjusting to the change and some getting sick, iOS 7 is a very worthy upgrade, especially when it comes to the addition of such new features as Control Center. But as I said in my review of iOS 7, there are places where I wish Apple had gone further. Android's deep customization options and integration with Google Now provide software features that go beyond what we expect from our phones today.

The Bottom Line
The iPhone 5s is a great phone, especially if you are upgrading from the iPhone 4 or 4s, but it's not as compelling if you have the iPhone 5 or even some competing Android handsets. When it comes to camera performance, the security convenience provided by the fingerprint reader, general design and app selection and quality, the iPhone 5s is at the top of the heap and does set the bar in the crowded smartphone market.

But while the iPhone 5s is the most forward thinking iPhone and one of the best phones to have in your pocket or bag, some of those various non-changes sure do indicate that there is plenty more forward thinking Apple can do.