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Friday, March 8, 2013

As Police Strike, Egypt Tensely Awaits Verdicts in Soccer Riot

More than 70 soccer fans were killed in a stadium riot in February 2012 that was broadcast live on Egyptian television. More verdicts in the riot are due Saturday.

As my colleague David Kirkpatrick in Cairo reported, a quickly spreading strike among the police force has added to a growing sense of chaos and lawlessness in Egypt, where opposition to President Mohamed Morsi has been newly energized in recent days by anticipation of a second round of verdicts over the deaths of more than 70 soccer fans in a stadium riot in Port Said last year.

In the first round of verdicts in January, 21 Port Said soccer fans were sentenced to death. That stunned many Egyptians and enraged residents of Port Said, sparking riots there and in other cities along the Suez Canal that killed at least 40 people and shook the state’s grip on power there.

Saturday’s verdicts will determine the culpability of police officers and officials in Port Said’s soccer club who were on duty at the time of the riot in February 2012. Rawya Rageh, a correspondent for Al Jazeera English, reported on Twitter that 2,000 police officers will be present to secure the courthouse in Cairo when the verdicts are read.

In the riot last year ! at Port Said stadium, fans of the local team, Al-Masry, stormed the field after the match ended and attacked visiting fans from Cairo’s Al-Ahly soccer club. It was the deadliest soccer violence in Egypt’s history and was broadcast live on Egyptian television.

Anger at the first verdicts and the subsequent deaths of protesters at the hands of the police has left Port Said effectively shut down for weeks. Protesters have attacked police stations and burned the city’s security headquarters, and the police have killed several protesters in the process.

Port Said was largely quiet on Friday as the army moved in to secure the city and protesters buried their dead. Jonathan Rashad, an Egyptian photojournalist, posted an update on Twitter from the funeral of two men killed in this week’s clashes.

The government’s problems in Port Said may have provided a spark to the police strike, which may have begun when 2,000 riot police officers in the Suez Canal city of Ismai’lia refused to deploy to Port Said. The strike has since spread to at least 60 police stations and 10 riot police training camps, reported Ahram Online, an English-language news site affiliated with a state-run newspaper, including 7 in and around the capital.

In the central Egyptian city of Assiut, members of Gama’a Islameyya, a former Islamic militant group, said they would begin policing the streets because the ! city’s ! police were all on strike. The Associated Press quoted the local security chief, Gen. Aboul-Kassem Deif, saying it was illegal for the group to act as the police, but “I don’t know what to do.”

Striking police officers have also refused to protect the Cairo headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood and the family home of Mr. Morsi in a rural province, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm, an independent Egyptian newspaper. Sherief Gaber, an opposition activist andmember of Cairo’s Mosireen media collective, joked about the police insubordination in an update posted to Twitter.

Officers on strike have demanded the resignation of Mohamed Ibrahim, the interior minister appointed by Mr. Morsi, and many have said they were fed up with the frequent street battles with protesters in the two years since the overthrow of former President Mubarak. Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that protesting policemen in Alexandria carried banners that read “Leave, Brot! herhood M! inister” and “The police is in service to the people, not killers.”

In response to the strike, Mr. Ibrahim fired the chief of the Central Security Forces, the riot police used as government shock troops during protests and street battles.

Issandr el-Amrani, a political analyst who blogs at The Arabist, posted an update to Twitter that suggested the gravity of the situation.

A blogger who writes under the name The Big Pharaoh compared the police strike with a mutiny by the Central Security Forces in 1986, when thousands of officers revolted against President Mubarak, who at the time had been in power for only five years. More officers appeared to be participating in this week’s wave of strikes than took part in the 1986 mutiny.

On Friday, police officers in Port Said joined the strike. Bel Trew, a British journalist with Ahram Online who was in Port Said, interviewed striking police officers holed up inside a police station. She said they watched Bassem Youssef, a talk show host who has made a career of humorous attacks on President Morsi.

As the police withdrew from the city’s main security headquarters and grumbled about Mr. Morsi inside their stations, the military deployed to Port Said to secure the city. Residents greeted them enthusiastically, Ms. Trew said. She reported on Twitter that the military helped residents remove the Ministry of Interior’s flag from the security headquarters.

People loving army right now in #PortSaid military just helped them take down MOI flag from building http://t.co/0Dgfpnpamv

â€" Bel Trew - بل ترو (@Beltrew) 8 Mar 13

Ahram Online posted video to YouTube that shows army vehicles driving through a cheering crowd in Port Said. The video then shows a uniformed soldier on the roof of the city security headquarters helping a civilian pull down the Interior Ministry flag. The crowd chanted, “The army and people are one hand,” a slogan from the earliest days of the uprising against Mr. Mubarak.

Video posted to YouTube shows the military deploying to Port Said amid a spreading police strike.

While some police officers went on strike, others continued to clash with protesters in cities across the country on Friday. In Ca! iro, a pi! tched battle took place in an upscale Nile-side neighborhood that is home to the British and American embassies and a number of large hotels.

On Thursday, street battles in the same location produced a surrealscene: employees from the Semiramis Hotel, including bellhops, desk clerks and cooks in chef’s hats, picking up clubs and stones to defend the building from men they feared were looters. Al-Youm Al-Sabea, an Egyptian news Web site, posted video of the episode on YouTube.

Employees of the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo defended the building with clubs and stones.

As people across the! country ! anxiously waited for the verdicts to be read on Saturday morning, Samer Al-Atrush, a Cairo-based journalist, jokingly hoped for the best in an update posted to Twitter.



Today’s Scuttlebot: Cartoon Math and Tablet Traffic

The technology reporters and editors of The New York Times scour the Web for important and peculiar items. For Thursday, selections include Web sites now drawing more traffic from tablets than from smartphones, a commercial for the Path social networking app that seems to have gone astray and how Pixar scientists translate mathematical principles into software for making animated films.

Russians Bring Dashcam War Reporting to Syria

Video recorded from the roof of a Syrian government tank during a recent battle.

As much of the world first learned last month, when so much extraordinary footage appeared of a meteor screaming across the sky above the Urals, Russians are unusually fond of mounting cameras on the dashboards of their cars to record the many bizarre things that happen on their roads.

Now, it seems, a Russian news crew in Syria has brought that sensibility to war reporting. As the Syrian blogger who writes as Edward Dar noted on Friday, Russia’s Abkhazian Network News Agency has released footage of recent battles recorded by a camera mounted on a government tank.

As The Lede reported in January, not much is known about the origins of the Russian network, known as ANNA, but it regularly posts reports on YouTube, occasionally with English subtitles.

Like several recent ANNA reports shot almost entirely from the roof of a tank, the video that Mr. Dark found so striking was apparently recorded during intense fighting in the Damascus suburb of Darayya.

A video report from a Russian news agency on fighting in the Damascus suburb of Darayya.



Meet Memoto, the Lifelogging Camera

AUSTIN, TEX., â€" Facebook and Instagram have conditioned people into sharing photos of their most memorable moments â€" vacations, parties, weddings, meals and outings with friends.

But what about everything else that happens in between

That’s the content that Memoto, a Swedish start-up, wants to capture with a small, wearable camera that takes automatic photos of the surroundings of its wearer.

The square-shaped device can be clipped onto a collar, a jacket or worn around the neck on a string. It snaps photos automatically, at 30-second intervals, and switches off only when it is dark, face-down or placed into a pocket.

“It’s not only the stuff you thought you would what to remember,” like beautiful sunsets, elaborate dinners and rambunctious nights out with friends, said Martin Källström, one of the founders of the company. “Ordinary moments can turn out to be special. But the only way to see that is to capture everything.”

Mmoto is one of the hardware companies hoping to drum up attention for their product in Austin this week. They’re giving a talk and hosting a meet-up for self-trackers, or people who collect data about themselves in the hopes to learning more about their daily activities and habits.

The company, which was founded in 2011, has raised close to a million in fund-raising through Kickstarter and from European investors. The device costs $279 and includes a year of free online photo storage. It comes with 8 gigabytes of storage, enough to hold up to 6,000 photos. Its battery can last for a few days before it needs a recharge. The company has already received 3,000 preorders, and they hope to begin shipping devices out by late April or early May.

To start, the photos will not be ava! ilable for sharing through social media, although eventually that will be included as a feature. When its users plug the device into their computers to charge, Memoto uploads the photos via Wi-Fi into a companion application where its wearers can review the photos of the day, or watch a time-lapse video of a series of images. The app teases out the sharpest images of the set and displays them in a scrollable timeline.

Users will also be able to search through their photographic archive by location and time of day, which are captured by a clock and GPS unit built into the device. Eventually, its founders say, they hope that the photos in Memoto can be paired with other tracking and data applications, to provide the photostream associated with that activity. For example, runners who use RunKeeper or Nike Plus could someday sync their Memoto data with their running data and watch a playback of the images they captured on their morning jogs. In addition, double-tapping the device sets off the shutter an that could also be programmed as a signal to send an image to a service like Evernote or a social networking site like Twitter.

Memoto’s camera hints at some of the issues that will emerge about privacy, ownership of data and social etiquette as automatic lifelogging devices like theirs, or Google Glass, become more prevalent in the wild. There are also larger questions about how secure the sensitive information captured on these devices will turn out to be, or what happens should these companies go out of business, potentially taking reservoirs of personal information captured over the years with it.

Memoto’s founders say they kept the design conspicuous, so that others would be aware of it presence and could inquire about it or request that its owner take it off while they are talking. There is no off switch or even a way to delete photos captured by the device.

Mr. Källström believes that the protocol around when to capture and when to share will evolve naturally, as more ! devices l! ike his migrate into the mainstream.

Lifelogging “sounds like a crazy idea,” he said. “But the whole world is starting to think about it and the potential that can come from it.”



A Bin Laden Son-in-Law’s Video Messages

As my colleagues Marc Santora and William Rashbaum report, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who once served as a spokesman for Al Qaeda, was charged with conspiracy to kill Americans in federal court in Manhattan on Friday.

He pleaded not guilty, but Justice Department officials described Mr. Abu Ghaith as a propagandist who praised the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States in a video message broadcast on Al Jazeera just three weeks after the deadly strikes. Archival footage of Mr. Abu Ghaith with Bin Laden, and speaking on his behalf, was included in a new report from the Qatari network’s English-language channel.

Archival footage of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, speaking on behald of Al Qaeda in a report from Al Jazeera.

Officials said Mr. Abu Ghaith, who was married to one of Bin Laden’s daughters, Fatima, lived for about a decade in Iran, along with other members of that extended family.



Video of Preparations Inside the Sistine Chapel for Conclave

Preparations inside the Sistine Chapel for the conclave via The Vatican.

Vatican officials announced Friday that the 115 cardinals from around the world will officially begin their conclave, the official process used to elect the successor of Pope Benedict XVI, on Tuesday.

As my colleagues, Laurie Goodstein and Daniel J. Wakin reported several cardinals, before they were asked to stop giving interviews, offered hints earlier this week about what they are looking for in a next leader of the world’s 1. 2. billion Catholics. Offering sins of nostalgia for the late Pope John Paul II, they “cited attributes that the church now needs: a compelling communicator who wins souls through both his words and his holy bearing, and a fearless sheriff who can tackle the disarray and scandal in the Vatican.”

A video from inside the 15th-century Sistine Chapel, where the secret voting will take place, shows workers making the final preparations for the conclave. They put down a false floor over the ornate tiles and also installed equipment that would block any electronic signals from getting outside of the chapel. They also put the finishing touches on the stove that will signal white smoke when the next pope has been chosen.

A video also shows the urns used for voting inside the chapel.

After the “Vatileaks” scandal, when the former pope’s butler leaked secret documents alleging corruption in the Holy See, additional security measures will be taken for the conclave. To make sure there are no hidden microphones or recorders, the Sistine Chapel will be sweeped before the voting begins. Each cardinal takes an oath of secrecy before entering the Sistine Chapel for the voting that reads: “We promise and swear with the maximum loyalty to observe, both with clerics and laymen, the secrecy of all that regards the election of the Roman pontiff and what takes place in the place of election.”



North Koreans Fond of Leader, State TV Suggests

As The Lede has reported previously, displays of official joy were quite common in North Korea, even before Rodmania swept the nation. On Thursday, though, the producers of state television’s news bulletins appeared to outdo themselves with a long report on the frenzied reaction from the populace as the nation’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, inspected military units deployed near the country’s disputed maritime border with South Korea.

A report from North Korean state television showed the rejoicing of troops and their families during a visit by the country’s leader on Thursday.

As the Dubai-based reporter Jenan Moussa noted on Twitter, readers who might not want to devote 16 minutes to watching the full report can get a sense of the hysteria that greeted the leader at every stop on his boat tour by watching a one-minute Agence France-Presse edit.



Encouraging Girls to Learn Computer Coding

Computer Coding: It's Not Just for Boys

LONDON â€" At 16, Isabelle Aleksander spends hours writing computer code and plans a career in engineering. Her latest passion is the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, credit-card-size computer developed to help teach programming.

But when she told her best friend â€" “he’s male, also into programming” â€" his response was not what she had expected. “He was like, ‘Wait, how do you know about them You’re a girl and you shouldn’t be doing that,”’ Ms. Aleksander said incredulously.

She and her friend Honey Ross, 15, are among the few girls at King Alfred School, their private school in North London, with an intense interest in technology. The two, confident and outgoing, say they understand why: computing can seem boring from the outside, populated mainly by nerdy boys.

“It’s sad,” Ms. Ross said, chatting between classes in the computer lab. “It’s such an amazing world. It’s kind of waiting for loads of young girls” to jump in.

Belinda Parmar would love to see that happen, particularly since current statistics suggest that women in technology, already a relative rarity, are about to get even scarcer.

Three years ago, Ms. Parmar founded Lady Geek, a consulting firm that helps technology companies connect with female customers and bolster the number of women in work forces. Convinced that the paucity of women in technology has its roots in earlier life, Ms. Parmar last fall started Little Miss Geek, a non-profit aimed at convincing girls that programming is not a solitary grind but creative and eventually lucrative work.

Both sexes love gadgets â€" but while girls may enjoy owning the latest devices, parents and teachers do not point out that they also have the brains to build them, Ms. Parmar says.

“They’re dreaming of using the iPad mini and the latest smartphone, but they’re not dreaming of creating it,” she said.

As a consequence, Ms. Parmar said, women are missing out in an industry that is changing the world and growing and paying handsomely, as other sectors shrink.

Britain’s technology sector is 20 percent female, according to Eurostat, the E.U. statistics agency; Ms. Parmar cites a figure of 17 percent. Neither is far off the E.U. average of 21.8 percent, or the U.S. rate of 24 percent of technology jobs held by women, down from 36 percent in 1991, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The future looks bleak. Girls take just 8 percent of Britain’s computer science A-levels, the high school exam that is the passport to university studies, Little Miss Geek reports. In the United States, girls are 19 percent of high school Advanced Placement test-takers in the field, the Colorado center says.

Ms. Parmar traces the problem at least partly to technology’s image. When her team asked children to draw a person who worked in technology, all sketched men, often geeky and disheveled.

That brainy-guys-in-the-garage stereotype is hardly helped by companies that Ms. Parmar believes condescend to female customers with pink devices, and offend them with bikini-clad models at technology shows. “The technology industry is 30 years behind the car industry” in interaction with women, she said.

If they do enroll in computer classes, pre-adolescent and teenage girls often find they are the only girls in the room.

“Even girls that are doing well at math, they opt out. They just want to belong,” said Marina Larios, president of the European Association for Women in Science, Engineering & Technology.

Messages about gender and technology tend to start in earliest childhood, when boys are encouraged to play computer games and think about how things work, while girls get toy makeup and fashion sets, Ms. Parmar said.

Catherine Ashcraft, senior research scientist at the Colorado center, said:

“It appears on the surface that women aren’t choosing” technology, but “there are a lot of factors that are influencing that choice.” She continued: “Girls talk about how even when there’s a computer in the house, they don’t get access to it as much, because the boys are pushing them away.”

Subtle, even unconscious bias can prompt parents, teachers and guidance counselors to give the sexes different study and career advice, she said.

A version of this special report appeared in print on March 8, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.

Encouraging Girls to Learn Computer Coding

Computer Coding: It's Not Just for Boys

LONDON â€" At 16, Isabelle Aleksander spends hours writing computer code and plans a career in engineering. Her latest passion is the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, credit-card-size computer developed to help teach programming.

But when she told her best friend â€" “he’s male, also into programming” â€" his response was not what she had expected. “He was like, ‘Wait, how do you know about them You’re a girl and you shouldn’t be doing that,”’ Ms. Aleksander said incredulously.

She and her friend Honey Ross, 15, are among the few girls at King Alfred School, their private school in North London, with an intense interest in technology. The two, confident and outgoing, say they understand why: computing can seem boring from the outside, populated mainly by nerdy boys.

“It’s sad,” Ms. Ross said, chatting between classes in the computer lab. “It’s such an amazing world. It’s kind of waiting for loads of young girls” to jump in.

Belinda Parmar would love to see that happen, particularly since current statistics suggest that women in technology, already a relative rarity, are about to get even scarcer.

Three years ago, Ms. Parmar founded Lady Geek, a consulting firm that helps technology companies connect with female customers and bolster the number of women in work forces. Convinced that the paucity of women in technology has its roots in earlier life, Ms. Parmar last fall started Little Miss Geek, a non-profit aimed at convincing girls that programming is not a solitary grind but creative and eventually lucrative work.

Both sexes love gadgets â€" but while girls may enjoy owning the latest devices, parents and teachers do not point out that they also have the brains to build them, Ms. Parmar says.

“They’re dreaming of using the iPad mini and the latest smartphone, but they’re not dreaming of creating it,” she said.

As a consequence, Ms. Parmar said, women are missing out in an industry that is changing the world and growing and paying handsomely, as other sectors shrink.

Britain’s technology sector is 20 percent female, according to Eurostat, the E.U. statistics agency; Ms. Parmar cites a figure of 17 percent. Neither is far off the E.U. average of 21.8 percent, or the U.S. rate of 24 percent of technology jobs held by women, down from 36 percent in 1991, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The future looks bleak. Girls take just 8 percent of Britain’s computer science A-levels, the high school exam that is the passport to university studies, Little Miss Geek reports. In the United States, girls are 19 percent of high school Advanced Placement test-takers in the field, the Colorado center says.

Ms. Parmar traces the problem at least partly to technology’s image. When her team asked children to draw a person who worked in technology, all sketched men, often geeky and disheveled.

That brainy-guys-in-the-garage stereotype is hardly helped by companies that Ms. Parmar believes condescend to female customers with pink devices, and offend them with bikini-clad models at technology shows. “The technology industry is 30 years behind the car industry” in interaction with women, she said.

If they do enroll in computer classes, pre-adolescent and teenage girls often find they are the only girls in the room.

“Even girls that are doing well at math, they opt out. They just want to belong,” said Marina Larios, president of the European Association for Women in Science, Engineering & Technology.

Messages about gender and technology tend to start in earliest childhood, when boys are encouraged to play computer games and think about how things work, while girls get toy makeup and fashion sets, Ms. Parmar said.

Catherine Ashcraft, senior research scientist at the Colorado center, said:

“It appears on the surface that women aren’t choosing” technology, but “there are a lot of factors that are influencing that choice.” She continued: “Girls talk about how even when there’s a computer in the house, they don’t get access to it as much, because the boys are pushing them away.”

Subtle, even unconscious bias can prompt parents, teachers and guidance counselors to give the sexes different study and career advice, she said.

A version of this special report appeared in print on March 8, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.

Facebook Shows Off New Home Page Design, Including Bigger Pictures

Facebook Shows Off New Home Page Design, Including Bigger Pictures

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, announced a major makeover of its home page on Thursday.

MENLO PARK, Calif. â€" Hoping to tame the blizzard of information that has turned off many users and discouraged some advertisers, Facebook on Thursday unveiled a major makeover of the home page that greets users when they log into the site.

A screenshot of Facebook's redesigned news feed.

The new design of the Facebook News Feed presents bigger photos and links, including for advertisements, and lets users see specialized streams focused on topics like music and posts by close friends.

The changes are designed to address the company’s two most vital challenges: how to hold on to users at a time of competing, specialized social networks and how to draw more advertising dollars to please Wall Street.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said at a news conference that he wanted Facebook to be “the best personalized newspaper in the world.” And like a newspaper editor, he wants the “front page” of Facebook to be more engaging â€" in particular on the smaller screens of mobile devices.

The topic-specific News Feeds could well persuade users to spend more time scrolling through various streams of content. And the redesign will offer bigger real estate for advertisers, including more opportunities for brands to feature bigger pictures, which marketers say are more persuasive than words.

Facebook’s proprietary algorithms, which try to guess what every user will want to see, will continue to filter the items that show up on each person’s main News Feed. And users will be able to drill down into specific topics they are interested in, akin to the sections of a newspaper.

For instance, they can switch over to specialized feeds that are focused on just the music they are interested in, or they can scroll through a feed that consists of posts from the pages of products and people they follow â€" a bit like Twitter. If they want to see everything that their friends have posted, they can choose to do that, too; those posts will rush down in chronological order, without any filtering by Facebook’s robots.

Facebook introduced the new design to some users of the Web version of its service on Thursday, and will extend it to all Web users and to mobile apps in coming weeks.

It’s unclear how users will react to the changes; in the past, major design changes have often been greeted by complaints, at least initially.

Investors seemed to welcome the new look. Shares of Facebook rose 4.1 percent on Tuesday, to $28.58. But the company’s stock price remains substantially lower than its $38 initial public offering price last May.

Facebook is clearly hoping the new format will encourage users to stay longer on the site. At the news conference to announce the changes, officials offered examples of content they hoped would be compelling: photos of a cousin’s babies on one area of the page, Justin Timberlake concert news on another, a list of stories your friends liked on National Public Radio on still another.

“The best personalized newspaper should have a broad diversity of content,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “The most important stuff is going to be on the front page,” he went on. “Then people have a chance to dig in.”

The announcement met with swift praise from the advertising industry. In addition to bigger ad formats, the redesign’s specialized content streams could keep users glued to the site longer, marketers said.

“This will result in more time spent over all on the Facebook News Feed â€" and of course, increase engagement with content and ads,” said Hussein Fazal, chief executive of AdParlor, which buys advertisements on Facebook on behalf of several brands.

Facebook executives suggested that there would be no immediate changes to the number of advertisements that appear on the News Feed.

Julie Zhou, the company’s design chief, said only that ads would be more visual. “Everything across the board is going to get this richer, more immersive design,” Ms. Zhou said.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 8, 2013, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Facebook Shows Off New Home Page Design, Including Bigger Pictures.

Solar Cells May Supplement Smartphone Batteries

Why don’t power-thirsty smartphones incorporate solar cells, to reduce the reliance on batteries Because in general, the kind of solar cell that can be fabricated in a lightweight, flexible and durable form does not capture enough energy per square inch to make it worthwhile.

But a Silicon Valley solar power company thinks it has found a way to adapt the highest-efficiency solar cell chemistry, gallium arsenide, into a form that can be attached to a portable electronic device like a smartphone or a tablet. And a panel the size of a cellphone or a tablet would add measurably to the device’s longevity.

It wouldn’t do away with the battery. But depending on the light level where the device was carried, it could add 80 percent to the battery life. The main benefit would be outdoors or on a windowsill, because sunlight has about 100 times more energy than the light typically provided by fluorescent or incandescent lamps. Indoors, it might add only 10 to 15 percent. But the efficient type, gllium arsenide, is not only better overall at capturing energy; it is also better suited to capturing energy in low-light conditions that the ordinary silicon solar cells.

The problem has been that gallium arsenide, used heavily in the space program because it captures a high fraction of the light it receives, usually comes in an awkward form: rigid, heavy, fragile crystals. Solar cells already used on portable devices, like the ones on pocket calculators, are “thin film” devices, lighter and flexible, but they capture only a small fraction.

The solar company, Alta Devices, says that it can make gallium arsenide cells with the physical characteristics of thin films, and that they will convert 30.8 percent of the energy in the light to electric current.

Making a thin film out of gallium arsenide is a complicated process. Once upon a time, the photovoltaic world was divided into cells made from silicon that was grow! n into crystals, and cells made from gases that were deposited in thin films on special glass, called amorphous silicon because they were not crystalline.

Alta starts with a silicon wafer, crystalline in structure, heats it to 800 degrees Celsius, and deposits gases on it. These organize themselves into a crystal form, somewhat the way eggs, placed into an egg carton, line up in a uniform pattern. The cell is formed in layers, including a first layer that can later be dissolved chemically, so the finished cell can be peeled away from the silicon wafer. When it is peeled off, it retains its crystalline structure, a little like a waffle being pulled off a waffle iron.

The gallium arsenide layer is extremely thin, about 1 micron, or about one fortieth the width of a human hair.

The Alta cell is actually a stack of two working cells, which is now a common technique in high-end cells. The gallium arsenide captures energy from light in the wavelengths that include most of the visible spectrum. Bt it lets some other wavelengths pass through.

The second layer is a different material, indium gallium phosphide, which gets energy from the shorter wavelengths. That combination was pioneered for satellites in 1991, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

For hand-held electronics, the technology still has a way to go. Christopher S. Norris, the chief executive of Alta Devices, acknowledged that so far, the only customer is the military; soldiers use the cells to minimize the amount of batteries they have to carry on the battlefield. They are also used at fixed bases to reduce consumption of diesel fuel for generators, simplifying logistics.

But Alta has built a prototype cover for a Samsung Galaxy phone and has designs that could be incorporated in other smartphones, Mr. Norris said. Incorporating the film would be fairly easy, he said, because much of the electronic hardware and the soft! ware need! ed to connect the cell to the battery is already on the phone.

A smartphone would probably take a patch of film with a peak output, in full sunlight, of 1.5 watts, he said, which is probably only about $3 worth of materials. (A cellphone plugged into a wall outlet generally draws 3 to 5 watts, he said, and an iPad, about 10 watts.) “If you’re in full sun, a watt and a half for10 minutes will give you an hour of talk time,” he said. The company posted an on-line calculator to estimate the benefits in various kinds of light.

He said there was probably a strong market in North America, Europe and Japan, but that the market could be even stronger in Third World locations where wireless has arrived in advance of an electricity grid.

Another potential market is the automobile. The surface area of a car will not allow enough electricity production to run the motors that power an electric car. But increasingly, some ancillary functins, like power steering or power brake pumps, or air-conditioning, are performed by electric motors, to lower the load on the internal combustion engine and improve gas mileage. Cells on the car roof could help with that, he said.



Icahn Seeks Special Dividend for Shareholders of Dell

A special committee of Dell’s board disclosed on Thursday that it had received a letter from Carl C. Icahn, who hinted at “years of litigation” if Dell did not back away from its $24.4 billion deal to sell the company to its founder.

The confirmation of Mr. Icahn’s intent to oppose the bid illustrates the growing pressure on Dell not to pursue the buyout by Michael S. Dell and his partner, the private equity firm Silver Lake. Mr. Icahn is joining a growing chorus that already includes the beleaguered computer company’s two biggest shareholders outside of Mr. Dell himself.

Mr. Icahn did not disclose the exact size of his stake, describing his hedge fund’s holdings only as “substantial.” CNBC reported on Wednesday that he held a stake of roughly 6 percent, acquired in recent weeks.

In the letter, sent to the committee on Tuesday, Mr. Icahn proposed that Dell instead issue a special dividend of $9 a share. Such a payout would be financed from the company’s cash on hand and new debt.

He estimated that the publicly traded company was worth about $13.81 a share, making his suggested transaction - a so-called leveraged recapitalization - worth about $22.81 a share.

“We believe, as apparently does Michael Dell and his p! artner Silver Lake, that the future of Dell is bright,” Mr. Icahn wrote in the letter. “We see no reason that the future value of Dell should not accrue to all the existing Dell shareholders - not just Michael Dell.”

If Dell fails to comply, Mr. Icahn said he would call on the board to combine a vote on the deal with a vote on re-electing the company’s directors. He said he planned to nominate an alternate slate of nominees.

He also wrote that the $24.4 billion management buyout would be subject to lengthy litigation from shareholders, who will claim it was negotiated to give maximum advantage to Mr. Dell, who is also the company’s chairman and chief executive.

Dell’s special committee, made up of independent directors, has argued that it reached the deal in good faith, having bargained hard for the current price and secured a number of concessions from Mr. Dell aimed at faclitating a higher alternative bid.

Potential bidders have signed nondisclosure agreements to take a look at the company’s books, including Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and the Blackstone Group, according to a person briefed on the matter.

It is unclear that any of those companies will ultimately make an offer.

In a statement on Thursday, the committee reiterated that it was seeking higher offers through March 22, and invited Mr. Icahn to participate in that process. So far, he has declined, the person briefed on the matter said.

“Our goal is to secure the best result for Dell’s public shareholders â€" whether that is the announced transaction or an alternative,” t! he commit! tee said..


Here is the text of Mr. Icahn’s letter to the special committee of Dell’s board:

We are substantial holders of Dell Inc. shares. Having reviewed the Going Private Transaction, we believe that it is not in the best interests of Dell shareholders and substantially undervalues the company.

Rather than engage in the Going Private Transaction, we propose that Dell announce that in the event that the Going Private Transaction is voted down by shareholders, Dell will immediately declare and pay a special dividend of $9 per share comprised of proceeds from the following sources: (1) $4.26 per share, or $7.4 Billion, from available cash as proposed in the Going Private Transaction, (2) $1.73 per share, or $3 Billion, from factoring existing commercial and consumer receivables as proposed in the Going Private Transaction, and (3) $4.26, or $5.25 Billion in new debt.

We believe that such a transaction is superior to the Going Prvate Transaction because we value the pro forma “stub” at $13.81 per share using a discounted cash flow valuation methodology based on a consensus of analyst forecasts. The “stub” value of $13.81 combined with our proposed $9.00 special dividend gives Dell shareholders a total value of $22.81 per share, representing a 67% premium to the $13.65 per share price proposed in the Going Private Transaction. We have spent a great deal of time and effort in determining the $22.81 per share value and would be pleased to meet with you to share our analysis and to understand why you disagree, if you do.

We hope that this Board will agree to adopt our proposal by publicly announcing that the Board is committed to implement our proposal if the Going Private Transaction is voted down by Dell shareholders. This would avoid a proxy fight.

However, if this Board will not promise to implement our proposal in the event that the Dell shareholders vote down the Going Private Transaction, then we reque! st that th! e Board announce that it will combine the vote on the Going Private Transaction with an annual meeting to elect a new board of directors. We then intend to run a slate of directors that, if elected, will implement our proposal for a leveraged recapitalization and $9 per share dividend at Dell, as set forth above. In that way shareholders will have a real choice between the Going Private Transaction and our proposal. To assure shareholders of the availability of sufficient funds for the prompt payment of the dividend, if our slate of directors is elected, Icahn Enterprises would provide a $2 billion bridge loan and I would personally provide a $3.25 billion bridge loan to Dell, each on commercially reasonable terms, if that bridge financing is necessary.

Like the “go shop” period provided in the Going Private Transaction, your fiduciary duties as directors require you to call the annual meeting as contemplated above in order to provide shareholders with a true alternative to the Going Private Transction. As you know, last year’s annual meeting was held on July 13, 2012 (and indeed for the past 20 years Dell’s annual meetings have been held in this time frame) and so it would be appropriate to hold the 2013 annual meeting together with the meeting for the Going Private Transaction, which you have disclosed will be held in June or early July.

If you fail to agree promptly to combine the vote on the Going Private Transaction with the vote on the annual meeting, we anticipate years of litigation will follow challenging the transaction and the actions of those directors that participated in it. The Going Private Transaction is a related party transaction with the largest shareholder of the company and advantaging existing management as well, and as such it will be subject to intense judicial review and potential challenges by shareholders and strike suitors. But you have the opportunity to avoid this situation by following the fair and reasonable path set forth in this letter.

Our p! roposal p! rovides Dell shareholders with substantial cash of $9 per share and the ability to continue as owners of Dell, a stock that we expect to be worth approximately $13.81 per share following the dividend. We believe, as apparently does Michael Dell and his partner Silver Lake, that the future of Dell is bright. We see no reason that the future value of Dell should not accrue to ALL the existing Dell shareholders - not just Michael Dell.

As mentioned in today’s phone call, we look forward to hearing from you tomorrow to discuss this matter without the need for us to bring this to the public arena.

Very truly yours,
Icahn Enterprises L.P.

By:
Carl C. Icahn
Chairman of the Board



Plan to Develop Online Exchange for Digital Wares Gains Momentum

Imagining a Swap Meet for E-Books and Music

The paperback of “Fifty Shades of Grey” is exactly like the digital version except for this: If you hate the paperback, you can give it away or resell it. If you hate the e-book, you’re stuck with it.

John Ossenmacher, the chief executive of ReDigi, which allows for the reselling of iTunes songs, said he was heartened by Amazon’s resale patent.

A diagram accompanying Amazon’s new patent for an exchange of secondhand digital material.

The retailer’s button might say “buy now,” but you are in effect only renting an e-book â€" or an iTunes song â€" and your rights are severely limited. That has been the bedrock distinction between physical and electronic works since digital goods became widely available a decade ago.

That distinction is now under attack, both in the courts and the marketplace, and it could shake up the already beleaguered book and music industries. Amazon and Apple, the two biggest forces in electronic goods, are once again at the center of the turmoil.

In late January, Amazon received a patent to set up an exchange for all sorts of digital material. The retailer would presumably earn a commission on each transaction, and consumers would surely see lower prices.

But a shudder went through publishers and media companies. Those who produce content might see their work devalued, just as they did when Amazon began selling secondhand books 13 years ago. The price on the Internet for many used books these days is a penny.

On Thursday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published Apple’s application for its own patent for a digital marketplace. Apple’s application outlines a system for allowing users to sell or give e-books, music, movies and software to each other by transferring files rather than reproducing them. Such a system would permit only one user to have a copy at any one time.

Meanwhile, a New York court is poised to rule on whether a start-up that created a way for people to buy and sell iTunes songs is breaking copyright law. A victory for the company would mean that consumers would not need either Apple’s or Amazon’s exchange to resell their digital items. Electronic bazaars would spring up instantly.

“The technology to allow the resale of digital goods is now in place, and it will cause a dramatic upheaval,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps, a technology consulting firm. “In the short term, it’s great for consumers. Over the long term, however, it could seriously reduce creators’ incentive to create.”

Scott Turow, the best-selling novelist and president of the Authors Guild, sees immediate peril in the prospect of a secondhand digital thrift shop. “The resale of e-books would send the price of new books crashing,” he said. “Who would want to be the sucker who buys the book at full price when a week later everyone else can buy it for a penny”

He acknowledged it would be good for consumers â€" “until there were no more authors anymore.”

Libraries, though, welcome the possibility of loosened restrictions on digital material.

“The vast majority of e-books are not available in your public library,” said Brandon Butler, director of public policy initiatives for the Association of Research Libraries. “That’s pathetic.”

He said that 60 percent of what the association’s 125 members buy was electronic, which meant sharp restrictions on use. Libraries cannot buy from Apple’s iTunes, he said. And so, for example, Pixar’s Oscar-winning soundtrack for the movie “Up” is not available in any public collection. An Apple spokesman confirmed this.

“If these things can’t be owned, who is going to make sure they exist going forward” Mr. Butler asked. “Without substantial changes, we can’t do what libraries have always done, which is lend and preserve.”

For over a century, the ability of consumers, secondhand bookstores and libraries to do whatever they wanted with a physical book has been enshrined in law. The crucial 1908 case involved a publisher that issued a novel with a warning that no one was allowed to sell it for less than $1. When Macy’s offered the book for 89 cents, the publisher sued.

That led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling limiting the copyright owner’s control to the first sale. After that, it was a free market.

Sales of digital material are considered licenses, which give consumers little or no ability to lend the item. The worry is that without such constraints digital goods could be infinitely reproduced while still in the possession of the original owner.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 8, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Reselling the E-Goods.

At an Annual Tech Show, It’s Hardware’s Turn in the Spotlight

At an Annual Tech Show, It’s Hardware’s Turn in the Spotlight

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Using a 3-D motion controller, Leap Motion’s chief executive, Michael Buchwald, shapes an imaginary piece of clay.

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Each year, thousands of tech enthusiasts flock to South by Southwest, the technology, music and film conference here, hoping to be among the first to find the next big thing in social networking and mobile apps.

Julie Uhrman is the founder and chief of Ouya, a Kickstarter-financed Android gaming machine.

Leap Motion’s motion controller.

Ouya’s game console.

But this year, it might be a piece of hardware that steals the show. The most talked-about start-ups this year include the maker of a camera that automatically takes a photo every 30 seconds, a new game console and a gadget that lets people control their computers and devices by waving their hands. Hugh Forrest, the director of the technology portion of South by Southwest, estimated that at least two dozen panels, talks and presentations involve some sort of new device or gadget at this year’s event â€" a much higher portion than he could recall from previous years.

“We always hope to be a showcase for new products and ideas in technology and that is reflected this year,” he said.

The new emphasis on devices over software reflects a much larger shift in the start-up and tech world, driven by tools like crowdfunding and 3-D printing that make it cheaper, faster and easier to create prototypes. The trend is accelerating partly because of the popularity of and excitement around small companies making items like wearable fitness devices as well as smartwatches developed by Pebble and smart thermostats created by Nest.

And now the devices are taking over the halls and convention center of South by Southwest, which has historically been known as a launchpad for new software services; Twitter, Foursquare, GroupMe and Highlight all got their inaugural push on those convention center grounds.

“This is where software development is going,” said Oskar Kalmaru, one of the founders of Memoto, a company that makes a Kickstarter-financed wearable automatic camera that takes pictures at 30-second intervals, creating a kind of personal photographic memory. “The innovating new technology is hardware that has a software component.”

The dropping costs of designing and building inventive new hardware products has prompted a wave of creativity and innovation that echoes the software boom a decade or two ago in Silicon Valley.

Mr. Kalmaru and his team, who are traveling from Stockholm to attend the weeklong conference, are among the hardware companies eager to dazzle and impress the throngs of early adopters, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who arrive thirsty for the latest in start-ups and innovative ideas.

“It’s the same thing that happened with software development over the past 10 to 15 years is now happening to hardware,” said Mr. Kalmaru. “It’s much easier now.”

In some ways, the arrival of artisanal hardware at South by Southwest, said Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst at Altimeter Group, can be seen as an indication that the world of mobile applications and “me-too” social networks has become oversaturated and crowded.

“For mobile start-ups it can be very frustrating and difficult to fight your way through the noise,” she said.

Not to mention that the crush of 27,000 conference-goers expected to descend on Austin will most likely strain cellular and data networks and make it difficult to get a signal on smartphones, let alone successfully use and try out a new app there.

“It’s just too hard for a small start-up to get noticed there,” said Jen Grenz, a vice president of a mobile company called Lango that is releasing a messaging application this week. But it is not attending the event to do so. Snapchat, one of the most talked-about apps in the tech world, is also skipping the event.

But chief executives of the hardware companies Nest and Jawbone will be there for the first time, although other executives from their companies have attended in years past.

Julie Uhrman, the founder and chief executive behind Ouya, a Kickstarter-financed Android gaming machine, is a keynote speaker. The company recently announced that its consoles would begin shipping in late March.

Bre Pettis, the founder of the Makerbot 3-D printers, is delivering the opening remarks of the festival and speaks again at a presentation by Supermechanical, a hardware company based in Austin that makes Wi-Fi-enabled sensors that can be used to detect things like moisture. Such a device could alert its owner by text message that the basement is flooding.

Like the software companies, hardware makers want to capture the attention of influential people who are inclined to tell their friends about a hot new device. It is also likely that the type of people attending South by Southwest will be interested in purchasing a “lifelogging” camera or a gesture-based controller.

“The right kind of social experience can take off there,” said Kira Wampler, a vice president at Lytro, which makes a sleek, rectangular camera that lets users refocus photographs after they are taken. “It is a group of people who are really interested in exploring what is new.”

Ms. Wampler said SXSW was the company’s first major event. Lytro has set up an area where curious attendees can sign up for photo walks or try out and buy Lytro cameras, which start at $400.

The company will also have 100 devices available for people to borrow for a day.

The makers of the Leap Motion Controller, a gadget that lets people control their computers and devices by waving their hands â€" not unlike those seen in the movie “Minority Report” â€" are setting up a dozen demonstration tents in the parking lot of a barbecue restaurant and inviting attendees to try out the device.

Michael Buckwald, a founder and the chief executive of Leap Motion, said the company’s goal was to create a way for people to “walk up and walk into what we see as the future.”

Joining the little start-ups are some behemoth device makers. Samsung, which had a large presence at both the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January and the Mobile World Congress cellphone trade show in Barcelona last week, is setting up shop at South by Southwest too. One of the biggest companies in the world, Samsung is giving away free rides in Uber cabs and snacks like ice cream and pizza, and is hosting a panel with “Arrested Development” cast members to try to drum up some attention for its line of Galaxy smartphones.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 8, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: At an Annual Tech Show, It’s Hardware’s Turn in the Spotlight.

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