Zynga into the Game on Cellphones

Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus expects mobile gaming to grow, but believes Web-based gaming will still be crucial. Facebook, he said at the AllThingsD conference this morning, remains central to Zynga's platform and distribution. Facebook, the company's first platform, was the early accelerator for its games and is still really important in part because it has both a social stack and an app stack, he told conference host Kara Swisher.

For distribution, it has been significant, but there are other alternatives. Building a great experience matters, as does how well it is integrated into people's lives. Facebook has been a great platform on the Web and has the potential to be on mobile, as well. Pincus was clear to mention that desktop and Web use remains big. Just as Facebook was the accelerator for play on the Web, mobile fills that role for play in more places. The majority of play, though, is still on the desktop, often from company employees during office hours.

The conversation started with a discussion on valuation and the stock market. Zynga went public six months ago, but it had been preparing to go public for two years prior to that by setting quarterly goals and having a quarterly all-hands meeting. Going public wasn't a huge transition for Zynga, Pincus explained. He believes the recent companies that have gone public are "awesome companies" with great business models, but the market is busy trying to figure out how to value them.

Zynga began with the thought there was room in the gaming market and a new business model could monetize it. Reach, retention, and revenues were the principles on which Pincus built Zynga. In the early stages, he placed 40 percent of the focus on each of the first two, and just 20 percent on revenues, but that balanced out over time. Mobile is still in the early stages, with games such as Words with Friends and Draw Something, though he expects mobile usage to grow rapidly and revenue to follow.

Pincus agrees that part of the gaming market is a "hits" market, with some games like Farmville having a very intense period of use. However, Zynga is good at releasing new content to extend the life of such games. Many other games, like Poker, are "evergreen."

Acquisitions are not in Zynga's business model, although it has made some. When the company bought Words with Friends, it had less than two million daily active users. Zynga thought the product could grow, and soon it was more than five times as popular and was building extensions. He was attracted to Draw Something because of its focus on user-generated content. Success comes by integrating a product with Zynga's platform, rolling it out to other countries, and extending the brand. It's crucial to keep a product line strong over a period of years, so it is too early for Pincus to tell if it is a success.

Zynga aims to be best operator of mobile social games and needs to have the best platform and network to do that. The company recently announced opening its platform, network, and APIs to other game makers. "We want to be a game network much like Xbox Live," Pincus said, but he isn't interested in getting into the console market.

"Innovation for us comes in lots of small places and ways," Pincus said. The company focuses on making it easier to play and filling in the gaps. Zynga, in Pincus' eyes, is a disruptor.

Pincus aspires to be a great CEO, not just a product entrepreneur. He learns things as a CEO every week. Though he's good at planning products, he realizes he must learn on the job how to manage, turning to other entrepreneurs like Intuit's Scott Cook for advice.

When asked to compare different international markets, he asserted Asia is ahead of the U.S. in converting "players to payers," but the U.S. is ahead in things like game mechanics. While the U.S is now focusing a lot on mobile games, countries in Europe are more focused on the PC.  "Real-money" gaming could be very big, but is dependent on regulation changes, Pincus said.

A look at Samsung's Series 5 550 Chromebook

Indeed, the name "Chromebook" comes from the fact that the laptop is running the so-called Chrome OS - basically an embedded version of Google's Chrome Web browser. If you've used the Chrome browser on Windows or Mac, you know that it asks you to log in, and then it syncs your bookmarks, Google identity, Google Docs, and Google Drive files. The Chromebook works the same way, except there's no way out of that browser. Apps can run on a Chromebook, but they're Web apps; they load through the browser.

That's not to say the Chromebook can't do anything offline: it can read files and play movies and music anytime. And Chrome OS has gotten better at file compatibility PowerPoint, Word docs, Excel files, ZIP files, and PDFs all load well and look great. You can't edit documents without first uploading to Google Docs, though. Photos can be viewed and even lightly edited with brightness and contrast adjustments, rotation, and cropping. The files can be resaved or uploaded to Picasa.

Our experience with the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook last year left us underwhelmed: it had smoothly running hardware and a clean operating system, but with such a limited set of uses compared with Windows, a high sticker price of over $400, and the requirement of being online to use most apps like Google Docs, the Chromebook didn't add up to a logical choice for anyone other than a Google cloud devotee. A year later, the new Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550 has slightly improved hardware and improved Chrome OS software, but its price - a whopping $449, or $549 with a Verizon 3G wireless antenna - is flat-out crazy.

Here's the biggest problem with the Chromebook: the hardware's fine, and the simplified Web-based OS is clever, and even versatile if you don't mind its limitations. Still, it's a radically reduced subset of what you can get on a Windows or Mac laptop...or even an iPad or Android tablet, for that matter. Yet, it costs more than a new iPad 2, a thinner, keyboard-enabled Android tablet like the Asus Transformer Pad, or a fully featured 11-inch ultraportable laptop like the AMD-powered HP dm1z. If the Chromebook were $99, this could have been a revolutionary product. As it currently stands, it's merely an invitation to pay a lot of money to be part of a Google experiment.

Internet service from Verizon FiOS Speeds to 300 Mbps

Verizon Bumps Up FiOS Internet Speeds to a Maximum of 300 Mbps. Pricing for all of the tiers will be announced next month, where Verizon users can choose a standalone Internet service or add these tiers to their bundles. Verizon announced today that it will not only more than double the speeds of many FiOS Internet tiers, but will also add two new tiers.

According to Verizon, its updated FiOS Internet tiers will consist of 50/25 Mbps and 150/65 download/upload speeds. However, other entry-level options will remain the same, such as the 15/5 Mbps, 25/25 Mbps, 35/35 Mbps, 50/20 Mbps and 150/35 Mbps tiers. The two new tiers will feature 75/35 Mbps or 300/65 Mbps speeds. Verizon said the 300/65 tier is double that of the current FiOS Internet top speed, which is 150/35 Mbps.

"The ways we used the Internet and watched TV over the past 10 to 15 years have dramatically shifted," said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon's consumer and mass market business unit. "With the emergence of smartphones, smart TVs, Blu-ray players, tablets and gaming consoles that also serve as over-the-top devices, consumers need more bandwidth to receive the highest quality experience."

Each tier is targeted at a specific audience. The layout is as follows: 15/5 Mbps for a one or two person household for just email and Web browsing; 50/25 Mbps for a multi-person household that downloads music, watches videos and telecommutes; 75/35 Mbps for households that have three or more people on Internet-connected devices, stream HD movies, and play multi-player gaming, and 150/65 and 300/65 for households with five or more heavy Internet users.

"Our top FiOS speed will be twice as fast as anything America has ever seen," said Mike Ritter, chief marketing officer for Verizon's consumer and mass market business unit. "High-speed Internet no longer is just for techies, as more than half of our residential consumers already use at least a 20 Mbps Internet connection. Streaming online video on an all-fiber-optic connection providing faster speeds is better and more reliable during peak Internet usage hours.

"As recently as 2005, video was less than 10 percent of Web traffic. By the end of this year, we expect it to be 50 percent, growing to 90 percent in just a few years."

The 150/65 and 300/65 tiers will require a gigabit passive optical network (GPON) installation. Pricing for all of the tiers will be announced next month, where Verizon users can choose a standalone Internet service or add these tiers to their bundles.

Apple's Problems in Making the Product in the U.S.

Apple wants to make products in U.S., but that's not so easy. Let's make the iPhone in the good ol' U. S. of A. Who's with me? There are few Americans who don't like the idea of an all-American iPhone, iPad or MacBook. "Designed in California," sure - but why not made there, too?

During the D: All Things Digital conference this week, Apple chief executive Tim Cook suggested that he wanted his celebrated tech company to make more components, and perhaps assemble them, here in the U.S.  But it's not that easy. Cook knows it. As a longtime operations guy, there are probably few things the man knows better than a supply chain. When he says the semiconductor industry is good in the U.S., it's good. When he says there aren't high-tech manufacturing skills in the U.S., he's probably right. But actions speak louder than words, and there are good reasons why Apple no longer makes its millions upon millions of products stateside - because it just doesn't make good business sense otherwise.

We've seen this film before. Before founder Steve Jobs died, he made headlines for the same reason, as the national economy crumbled beneath Apple.

Here's an excerpt from a New York Times report in January: It isn't just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that "Made in the U.S.A." is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

The reason: there's a very real tradeoff between what's good for workers and what's good for business. When push comes to shove, business wins - which is why Apple's American employees enjoy comparatively nice perks while employees of its supply chain partners live in 8,000-strong dormitories, ready to be woken up at midnight to start a 12-hour shift making new parts for an iPhone that received last-minute design changes from California. Imagine trying to do the same with an American worker. Unions would never stand for it, obviously, and chances are the rest of the family unit wouldn't, either.

My point is not to illustrate the benefits and drawbacks of unions, or even what's fair; rather, I'm trying to illustrate a landscape in which American companies can go overseas for greater flexibility, lower price and sheer speed.

So long as there are nations in this world willing to do work others aren't, outsourcing will exist. In the capitalist system, businesses can't win in the free market unless they exploit every advantage. There's a reason Apple, and GE, and many other well-regarded American companies keep most of their money offshore: so long as there's a cheaper alternative, it will be taken. There is no morality in money-making, even if there's still plenty to be made.

That's not to say things aren't changing. GE CEO Jeff Immelt has said that the U.S. is becoming more competitive as American firms, tired of decades of deterioration, snap to attention. Wages in the U.S. are still elevated - good for individuals but bad for business - but the skills, flexibility and speed are catching up.

The question is whether we'd really want them to. Does the U.S. really want to compete with China when human rights and quality of life standards are a bit more slippery? Manufacturing is a powerful driver of the American economy, but it's just one part of it. Whatever happened to the concept of a creative economy? (Answer: we realized we can't win on creativity alone. There needs to be some elbow grease, too.)

We focus on Apple because it's a beacon of American success and its products are made of components from all corners of the globe, but the truth is that the company can't do this alone. "Made in America" is a nice tagline, but it's a naive, unnecessarily restrictive strategy for a global company. So long as other nations are willing to outdo each other for business - Foxconn City, anyone? - corporations will follow.

In Tim Cook's case, that means there are few reasons to swim against the tide, aside from public opinion. All Apple can do is ensure that its supply chain partners are acting in accordance with local law. (Thus the Foxconn flareup.) But how do you take one company to task when an entire industry practices this way?

If you want Apple to manufacture in the U.S., you can't just pressure Tim Cook - you need to pressure every Samsung, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sony to do the same, along with the governments in each country that manufactures products for those companies, and every supplier in between. That's a bigger hurdle than any single organization can surmount.

So if the U.S. can compete on flexibility, speed and scale - we're not a tiny country, after all - and get partially there on wages, thanks to a down economy, there's only one thing left to address: skills. If I'm Tim Cook, lord of all that is vertical, I'd wonder backing accelerated industrial development in the U.S. - starting with the creation of technical schools that could create that coveted workforce of engineers without a bachelor's degree - could help return the balance back to the U.S.

The Midwest, the Carolinas - these American manufacturing hubs already exist, but they're not geared for electronics. If the U.S. wants China's contracts, it needs to build a hub that can outduel the Shenzhen export hub.

Then again, capitalism need not be moral. At the end of the day, what's really in it for Apple? If we want Apple to manufacture its products in the U.S., we shouldn't keep asking Tim Cook about it. We'd probably need to go a bit higher up in the chain of command.

Controversy about the Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K760

Logitech debuts new Wireless Solar Keyboard K760 for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Meet the new Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K760, the successor to Logitech's first solar keyboard, the K750, which earned a CNET Editors' Choice.

For K760 design is more compact than the K750 and more closely resembles Apple's own Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard with the addition of the strip of solar cells at the top of the unit. The key feature upgrade here is something that Logitech calls "Bluetooth connectivity with easy-switching capability." What that means is you can pair multiple devices - such as a Mac, iPad, or iPhone - and quickly switch among them with the push of a button without having to reconnect.

A demo in advance of the launch and can attest to the fact that the feature works as advertised. You can pair the keyboard to as many as three devices (in the demo, we switched from using the keyboard with an iMac to an iPad).

K750 and Logitech's just-introduced Solar Keyboard Folio for iPad, you can charge this keyboard in any light whether it be lamp light or sunlight. Logitech says that fully powered the keyboard works for at least three months, even in total darkness (based on average use per day of eight hours).

$79.99 for the price tag on the Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K760 and it should start shipping in the next couple of weeks. No word on when or if Logitech will offer a Windows version of the keyboard but it seems like a safe bet to assume that something's in the works.

Google New Chrome Box hurdles Apple Mac Mini

Google Chromebox challenges Apple Mac Mini. Google has launched a New Chromebook laptop and a new, Mac Mini-style Chromebox that it hopes will boost its Chrome OS operating system.  The devices both use the latest version of Chrome OS, the expanded version of Google's popular web browser that can power an entire new model of computer.

Chrome OS has proved popular with some educational establishments and some businesses because it is automatically upgraded to the latest version and reduces the need for IT departments to manage anti-virus systems. Despite this, the existing laptops, made by Samsung and Acer, have failed to capture the consumer imagination, and overall sales have been low.

300,000 Chromebooks offer will be sold this year, accounting for less than 1 per cent of the laptop market. The two new devices include an improved, faster laptop, the Series 5, and a smaller box that will plug into existing monitors or televisions to provide access to the latest Chrome OS on a new platform. Google's Linus Upson said the Chromebox had been developed by engineers who "wanted something to plug in to their TVs and play media through", but denied that it challenged Google's existing Google TV products.

Many users have bought Mac Mini computers as media PCs. Chrome OS currently relies heavily on a network connection, and until recently had neither a Windows-style desktop nor a file management system. Incremental upgrades have made offline access to Gmail possible, and offline access to documents is also launching soon.

A beta version is already available. Within the next two months, Google will also integrate Chrome OS with Google Drive, which it says will automatically back up all file whenever the machines can connect to the web. It has also recently added the ability to pin apps to the taskbar and to resize windows. A growing number of Chrome apps are available and Google says it is committed to reducing the limitations on what Chrome OS can do when it does not have access to the web.

The new Chromebook runs 2.5x faster than existing models, and the Chromebox runs 3.5x faster. Both models use an Intel Core processor and contain 16gb of flash memory. They will cost £379 and £279 respectively. Models from other manufacturers are also expected to be released soon. Google said Chrome OS could now open more file types than ever before, including Microsoft Office documents and PDFs, and added that the bid to sell Chromebooks would include a new push to introduce so-called 'Chromezones' in Best Buy shops across America. London's flagship brand of PC World featured Google's first retail store.

The new models will be for sale online and in store. Prices for the New Chromebook, called the Samsung Series 5 550, are similar to those for existing models. A range of analysts has suggested that Chrome could take off as a PC for those who are unfamiliar with computers, or people needing a cheap basic laptop, but stressed that the new, second generation models were still a new concept.