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Tuesday, September 3, 2013

With a Burst of Color, Turkey’s Public Walkways Become a Focus of Quiet Protest

Video posted on YouTube by Turkish protesters showed stairs across the country painted in rainbow-colored stripes.

In Istanbul, known as the city of seven hills, dozens of public stairways crisscross centuries-old neighborhoods, giving pedestrians a way to avoid heavy car traffic on the streets.

Those walkways generally attract little notice but last week that changed when a retired forestry engineer decided to paint the Findikli stairs in the central district of Beyoglu in all the colors of the rainbow â€" an act of guerrilla beautification that unintentionally triggered a fresh ripple of anti-government protest.

Almost as soon as the paint was dry, residents of the city were posing for pictures on the uneven and rundown but newly bright steps connecting Findikli to Cihangir, a liberal neighborhood frequented by artists.

The retiree behind the caper, Huseyin Cetinel, 64, told the local media his original motivation for applying the fresh coat of paint to the stairs was not activism but simply “to make people smile.” Mr. Cetinel said that he spent nearly $800 on paint and devoted four days to sprucing up the stairs with help from his son-in-law.

“Don’t you think Findikli Stairs are just amazing? Thanks to those who did it,” one Twitter user wrote last week.

Other Turks on the social network, assuming that the painting project was related to calls for equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Istanbul, posted messages of solidarity.

What transformed the painted stairs into a political issue, however, was the surprise that Findikli residents woke up to last Friday, when they discovered that the stairs had been hastily, and somewhat unconvincingly, repainted in their original color â€" a dark cement grey.

Speaking to Turkish television reporters after his bright Findikli stairs were painted over in grey, Mr. Cetinel pointed out that all of nature â€" “cats, birds, flowers, mountains” â€" is brightly colored. “Where does this grey come from? Did we have another Pompeii and got flooded with ash?”

To the mainly young, educated and liberal Turks who rallied this year against the autocratic tendencies of the ruling, Islamist Justice and Development Party, covering the rainbow stairs seemed to be yet another sign of intolerance and a lack of respect for their right to claim public space.

Activists almost immediately got organized on Twitter, using the hashtag #DirenMerdiven, or ResistStairs, a reference to the hashtag used for protests in June against government plans to build a shopping mall in place of the park in Beyoglu, #DirenGeziPark, or ResistGeziPark.

The following day, as calls to repaint the Findikli stairs spread on Twitter and Facebook, the Beyoglu municipality first denied, then admitted that it was their workers who had painted the stairs grey. Before the Municipality joined the effort to bring back the rainbow look in Findikli, people across Turkey had already taken up brushes in solidarity and painted public stairs in their cities in similar colors.

“Slowly, Turkey’s stairs are picking up rainbow colors, don’t you think it’s more beautiful this way?” a Twitter user wrote last Saturday.

“The most colorful protest,” a local newspaper announced over a collage of images from Ankara to Izmir.

For many Turks who visited the Findikli stairs this weekend, the paint duel seemed to be yet another demonstration of a government bent on controlling their public and private lives.

“There has been some movement in the society, a social uprising together with the Gezi Park protests and this is just an extension of that spirit,” Nalan Ozgul, a financial adviser said, as her daughter who was visiting from Paris nodded in approval. “The fact that the government-run municipality first denied having painted over the stairs, than agreed to paint them back in color shows how desperate and indecisive they are about their policies.”

Any sense of oppression dragged more people out in the streets, instead of cementing government control, so authoritative policies were doomed to fail she added. “I would not have come here if they haven’t repainted this over in grey, so here I am with others.”

On Sunday, a bride showed up with her groom at the Findikli stairs to pose for wedding photographs. “Where could be a better setting?” said Gamze Ozmermer, neatly correcting her veil.

“The air of conflict that our world caught in, all those human losses, misery need healing,” Ms. Ozmermer said.

“Colorful scenes might be a remedy.”

A public stairway in Istanbul's Beyoglu district, freshly painted in rainbow stripes, has become a popular photo backdrop.Sebnem Arsu/The New York Times A public stairway in Istanbul’s Beyoglu district, freshly painted in rainbow stripes, has become a popular photo backdrop.


Today’s Scuttlebot: Tasty New Android and a Marriage Made in Finland?

Every day, The New York Times’s staff scours the Web for interesting and peculiar items.

Late Monday, Microsoft announced that it was acquiring the phone units of Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone pioneer. It’s seen as an audacious move intended to help the company capitalize on the smartphone market as its current chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, prepares to retire. The announcement left many to reflect on Nokia’s once-dominant presence in the cellphone market.

Just Say Nokia
Wired |  A Wired profile from 1999 offers a reminder of Nokia’s epic rise before it faltered. - Ashwin Seshagiri

When Nokia’s Phones Were Fashion Statements
The Atlantic |  When dumb phones were cool: a visual history. - Ashwin Seshagiri

From Phones to Fashion, Nokia Style
The Atlantic |  A feature from 1999 on Nokia’s chief designer. - Ashwin Seshagiri

Here’s what we noticed today:

Android Kit Kat Unveiled in Google Surprise Move
B.B.C. |  Gimme a Google bar: Nestle will sell 50 million Android-themed Kit Kats after Google uses the name for the update to its mobile operating system. - Vindu Goel

Versions of the Android operating system have always been related to food, which always seems to produce sarcastic commentary.

Uber Snatches Up Executives From Tech Titans
Uber |  Uber, which is now valued at $3.5 billion, announced that executives from Facebook and Google are joining the company. - Ashwin Seshagiri

Business Success Formed by Design Thinking
Fast Company |  An oral history of Apple design, part 1 of 6 - Ashwin Seshagiri



Tracking the Syrian Crisis and the International Response

The Times is following the conflict in Syria as the United States and its allies consider military action and will provide updates, analysis and public reaction from around the world.

The End of an Era in Mobile

In the summer of 2007, Nokia was on top of the world. The company had a market valuation of around $120 billion, $10 billion more than Apple. Nokia’s share of the global smartphone market was an astounding 48.7 percent.

But by the third quarter of 2012 â€" just five years later â€" Nokia was worth a paltry $8.2 billion, $624 billion less than Apple, and its share of global smartphone sales had slipped to just 3.5 percent.

Monday night, the company announced an agreement to sell its handset and services business to Microsoft for $7.2 billion. (Which, it should be noted, is about what Apple made in profit in the second quarter of 2013.)

What happened? First, the Apple iPhone was introduced, then came Google’s Android operating system. Like a one-two punch, Nokia went down.

“Nokia’s acquisition symbolizes the end of the old mobile era,” wrote Thomas Husson with Forrester Research in an e-mail. Nokia was king when hardware was king, he added.

And that’s not the case anymore.

Back in 2007, before the iPhone, there were hundreds of variations of Nokia mobile phones on the market. There were those that flipped open, some with minuscule two-inch screens, and others designed to look like fashion accessories.

Then came the era of flat, rectangular screens, where the design of a smartphone became secondary to the design of the software on those smartphones. People also started making purchases based on apps and ecosystems. Before long, those same ecosystems expanded to other gadgets. Companies like Apple and Google started offering tablets and television-like experiences that connected to the smartphone, allowing apps to roam between devices.

Nokia and BlackBerry are examples of “companies â€" in the consumer electronics space itself â€" that failed to understand the shift to touch-screen devices and tablets,” Mr. Husson wrote in a blog post. “The Nokia story highlights the need to consider mobile as the catalyst for broader technology and marketing changes.”

Juniper Research echoed that sentiment in a report about the future of smartphones. Juniper noted that Nokia was once a famous brand in the mobile phone market, but the company “found it difficult to carry this success over to the high-end smartphone market where Nokia saw a 65 percent decrease in its smartphone shipments in 2012 compared to 2010.”

Of course, Nokia was not the only company damaged by the iPhone and Android. BlackBerry, formerly called Research in Motion, for years commanded more than 50 percent of the North American smartphone market, according to the research company Gartner.

Now, BlackBerry has 3.4 percent of the market.



For BlackBerry, Bad News in the Microsoft-Nokia Marriage

OTTAWA â€" If misery loves company, BlackBerry had a friend in Nokia while both companies were struggling to adapt to a changed mobile phone world.

But Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia’s handset and services business, some analysts said on Monday, may now make it harder for BlackBerry to find its own savior and will only underscore the Canadian company’s fundamental problems.

“BlackBerry always looked small fry,” said Nick Spencer, the senior practice director for ABI Research in London. “Now they look even more small fry. They’re up against three of the biggest companies in the world.”

Once the dominant maker of smartphones, BlackBerry has spent the last couple of years vying with Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system for third place in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Apple’s iPhones and phones using Google’s Android operating system. The general indifference that greeted a new line of BlackBerrys introduced earlier this year, along with a new, more sophisticated BlackBerry operating system, led the company to say last month that it is “exploring strategic options” including a sale.

Reports, which were never confirmed, said Microsoft had at least kicked BlackBerry’s tires at some point but decided not to bid for the company. But its purchase of Nokia, which had already adopted Windows Phone for its handsets, rules out any slim hope that Microsoft’s wealth and other resources might provide a solution to BlackBerry’s problems.

While Mr. Spencer believes that BlackBerry is most likely to be broken into separate pieces of varying interest to buyers, he said the Microsoft transaction could provide BlackBerry with a new, if slim, hope for salvation. Apple, like BlackBerry, has always designed and controlled both its handsets and operating system. Google acquired Motorola just over a year ago. With the Nokia purchase, Windows Phone is also allied to a hardware brand.

That makes Samsung, which mainly uses Android in its market-leading handsets, the odd man out, Mr. Spencer said. There is, he said, the possibility that it might consider buying BlackBerry “if it also decides end-to-end software and hardware is the way to go.”

But Samsung is already a member of a consortium creating a new platform known as Tizen, and, perhaps as a warning to Google, its executives have suggested that the company has big plans for that operating system.

The exceptional financial strength Microsoft brings to Nokia may also make it more difficult for BlackBerry to go private through a private equity buyout. Several Canadian news media outlets have reported that Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto, which is BlackBerry’s largest institutional shareholder, is trying to form a consortium to buy the company. But that might leave BlackBerry in a similar position as Chrysler after it was taken private by a group led by Cerberus Capital. Undercapitalized, Chrysler was forced into bankruptcy and a government bailout after the auto market slumped in 2008.

“The additional resources Microsoft is putting into this business, that might be the bigger problem for BlackBerry,” said Brian Colello, a technology analyst at Morningstar. “This deal has to be considered a negative for BlackBerry.”

Since BlackBerry’s announcement last month, several financial analysts have declared the company’s handset business to be of no value to any potential buyer. But there has been speculation that its wireless security systems, unique global data network and software used by businesses to manage employees’ mobile phones could become viable businesses on their own.

“Microsoft is still fairly weak in device management, especially beyond Windows Phone devices, and the Nokia acquisition doesn’t help much there,” said Jan Dawson, an analyst with Ovum. “So BlackBerry still has an advantage there.”

He did, however, add the major caveat that BlackBerry’s current software is “is still only really good at managing its own devices.”

A major technology shift introduced in the new BlackBerry 10 operating system has also clouded the value of BlackBerry’s network and the distinctiveness of BlackBerry security.

Like Android and Apple’s iOS, the new BlackBerrys rely on ActivSync software licensed from Microsoft to coordinate e-mail and other data with servers and users’ other computers. The consumer versions of the BlackBerry 10 phones no longer use BlackBerry’s special network, making them no more, or no less, secure than competing phones. Corporate customers that license special server software from BlackBerry gain added security and access to that network. But Microsoft has its own security products as well as a large cloud computing network.

BlackBerry declined to comment.



Amazon Pairs Print and Digital Books With New Program

For most readers, print and electronic books are an either-or proposition. There just isn’t a compelling reason to buy both editions of one book, at least not at full price.

Amazon is about to test how much appetite there is for combined print-and-digital book purchases if it cuts the price of Kindle books to less than that of a Starbucks latte.

On Tuesday, the company plans to announce a new program, Kindle MatchBook, that lets its customers buy the electronic versions of books they have already purchased in print form for either $2.99, $1.99, $0.99 or free. That’s far less than the $11 or more that Amazon typically charges for standalone purchases of the latest Kindle titles.

One benefit of MatchBook is that Amazon will let its customers buy Kindle editions of books that they purchased in print as far back as 1995, the year Amazon opened for business. The discounted Kindle edition prices apply to book purchases made in the future on Amazon too.

In an interview, Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content, said one of the most common requests Amazon receives from its Kindle customers is a way to build parallel print and digital book libraries, which hasn’t been practical at full retail prices. He said many print lovers will enjoy Kindle features like text searching of books, especially reference books. Kindle fans, meanwhile, still want print editions of books as souvenirs and art objects.

“A lot of people are really attached to the idea of sticking books on a shelf,” Mr. Grandinetti said.

There’s little doubt some book fans exist who are as enthusiastic about the benefits of e-books as they are wistful for the sight of colorful book spines on their walls. The question is how many of them there are.

The success of the program will be determined partly by whether book publishers embrace it. So far, Amazon has agreements from only a couple of major publishers â€" HarperCollins was the only one Mr. Grandinetti was willing to name â€" to offer their titles through MatchBook.

He said Amazon hadn’t told most publishers about MatchBook yet and hoped to sign more up to join the program, which will begin in October. He predicted there will be more than 10,000 books available for purchase through MatchBook, including “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving, “I Know This Much is True” by Wally Lamb and “The Thorn Birds” by Colleen McCullough.

Although publishers have shown discomfort with Amazon’s outsize clout in book retailing, Mr. Grandinetti said he doesn’t expect a lot of resistance, because MatchBook represents an “incremental revenue stream for publishers and authors.”

Even if Amazon gets widespread buy-in from publishers, it isn’t clear whether a discounted combined price will be compelling. In some cases, the price for Kindle editions of older books is already very low (the Kindle version of “A Prayer for Owen Meany” is $2.99, for example). MatchBook will make little difference to a print buyer of that book unless Amazon drops the Kindle price to almost nothing.

For the latest bestsellers like Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In,” the value could look better. Amazon currently sells the print and Kindle editions for standalone prices of $12.81 and $10.99, respectively. Assuming that Ms. Sandberg’s book becomes available through MatchBook and that Amazon doesn’t jack up the print price of the book, an e-book and print package for “Lean In” would cost $15.80 or less.

Does the nostalgia for print run deep enough among Kindle users to justify the extra price, though, and is there really much hunger for digital editions of long-ago print purchases?

Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, is fiendishly good at selling people things they didn’t necessarily know they needed. If he can’t sell two books for the price of a bit-more-than-one, then it’s unlikely anyone can.



Microsoft-Nokia Could Woo Buyers Trading Up to Smartphones

It’s clear that converting people from one brand of smartphone to another is a costly and difficult transaction. Apple iPhone owners swear by their iPhones. Google Android owners love the openness of the Android ecosystem.

But few people feel so attached to their less-smart handsets, the lower-end feature phones.

While the sale of Nokia to Microsoft for $7.1 billion will help standardize the two companies’ software and hardware for smartphones, it could also give Microsoft an edge in recruiting customers who still buy the more basic feature phones from companies like Nokia.

That group of customers still makes up hundreds of millions of people.

According to Gartner Research, a market research company, 435 million mobile phones were sold worldwide during the second quarter of this year. Of those cellphones, 225 million units were smartphones, an increase of 46.5 percent from the same period a year earlier. The remaining 210 million were feature phones, which decreased 21 percent from the same period last year.

This means that although people are converting from feature phones to smartphones â€" and quickly â€" there are still millions of customers left to make the switch. This is where Nokia comes in.

Although sales of Nokia smartphones that run the Windows operating system have grown slowly, Nokia still sells 55 million feature phones a quarter, according to the company’s latest earnings reports.

For years, feature phone owners have been trading up, from Nokia’s phones to Android and iPhone smartphones. Now Microsoft could have better leverage to try to persuade those customers to stay within the Nokia family and buy a Windows phone rather than a competitor.

Although the sale of smartphones overtook feature phones in the United States almost two years ago, it wasn’t until this year that this trend started to happening globally. A study by Nielsen suggested that the feature phone is still selling well in India, Brazil and Russia, for example.

If Microsoft hopes to entice Nokia feature phone owners, the company might want to hurry.

As Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White said in a research note earlier this year, Apple is expected to announce a less expensive iPhone later this month that will help it compete with Android in markets where people have not fully switched to a smartphone. Facebook is also trying to entice customers in developing countries.



Daily Report: Microsoft Acquires Nokia Units and a Top Executive

Microsoft says it has reached an agreement to acquire the handset and services business of Nokia for about $7.2 billion, in an audacious effort to transform Microsoft’s business for a mobile era that has largely passed it by, Nick Wingfield reports.

Late Monday night, Microsoft and Nokia said 32,000 Nokia employees would join Microsoft as a result of the all-cash deal, which will turn the Finnish mobile phone pioneer into the engine for Microsoft’s mobile efforts.

Stephen A. Elop, a former Microsoft executive who was running Nokia until the deal was signed, will rejoin Microsoft after the transaction closes, setting him up as a potential successor for Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive. Mr. Ballmer has said he will retire from the company within 12 months.

“This agreement is really a bold step into the future for Microsoft,” Mr. Ballmer said by phone from Finland. “We’re excited about the talent capabilities it will bring to Microsoft.”

The fortunes of the two companies in the mobile business have become closely intertwined since they signed a pact two years ago for Nokia to use Windows software on its phones, but it has done little to turn either company into a leader in the mobile business.

Windows Phone accounted for only 3.7 percent of smartphone shipments in the second quarter, according to the technology research firm IDC. Nokia remains the second-largest shipper of mobile phones in the world after Samsung, but that is largely because of lower-end feature phones, from which consumers are moving away. Nokia is no longer among the top five makers of smartphones.

Mr. Ballmer declined to say whether Mr. Elop, considered a leading contender to be his successor because of his familiarity with Microsoft and the importance of mobile to Microsoft’s future, will be considered for the job.

Mr. Elop, a native of Canada whose family still lives in the Seattle area, says he believes the industry is at a “tipping point” where a third mobile phone ecosystem, based on Windows Phone, will emerge as a more vibrant alternative to the iPhone and devices running Google’s Android operating system.



Daily Report: Microsoft Acquires Nokia Units and a Top Executive

Microsoft says it has reached an agreement to acquire the handset and services business of Nokia for about $7.2 billion, in an audacious effort to transform Microsoft’s business for a mobile era that has largely passed it by, Nick Wingfield reports.

Late Monday night, Microsoft and Nokia said 32,000 Nokia employees would join Microsoft as a result of the all-cash deal, which will turn the Finnish mobile phone pioneer into the engine for Microsoft’s mobile efforts.

Stephen A. Elop, a former Microsoft executive who was running Nokia until the deal was signed, will rejoin Microsoft after the transaction closes, setting him up as a potential successor for Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive. Mr. Ballmer has said he will retire from the company within 12 months.

“This agreement is really a bold step into the future for Microsoft,” Mr. Ballmer said by phone from Finland. “We’re excited about the talent capabilities it will bring to Microsoft.”

The fortunes of the two companies in the mobile business have become closely intertwined since they signed a pact two years ago for Nokia to use Windows software on its phones, but it has done little to turn either company into a leader in the mobile business.

Windows Phone accounted for only 3.7 percent of smartphone shipments in the second quarter, according to the technology research firm IDC. Nokia remains the second-largest shipper of mobile phones in the world after Samsung, but that is largely because of lower-end feature phones, from which consumers are moving away. Nokia is no longer among the top five makers of smartphones.

Mr. Ballmer declined to say whether Mr. Elop, considered a leading contender to be his successor because of his familiarity with Microsoft and the importance of mobile to Microsoft’s future, will be considered for the job.

Mr. Elop, a native of Canada whose family still lives in the Seattle area, says he believes the industry is at a “tipping point” where a third mobile phone ecosystem, based on Windows Phone, will emerge as a more vibrant alternative to the iPhone and devices running Google’s Android operating system.



Daily Report: Spam Network Exposed in Russian Legal Case

Online Attack Leads to Peek Into Spam Den

MOSCOW â€" For years, Igor A. Artimovich had been living in a three-room apartment he shared with his wife in St. Petersburg, sitting for long hours in front of his Lenovo laptop in his pajamas, drinking sugary coffee.

Igor Artimovich has been linked with a prolific illegal network of virus-infected computers that send spam worldwide.

If he were known at all to Western security analysts who track the origins of spam, and in particular the ubiquitous subset of spam e-mails that promote male sexual enhancement products, it was only by the handle he used in Russian chat rooms, Engel.

His pleasant existence, living in obscurity, changed this summer when a court in Moscow linked Mr. Artimovich and three others with one of the world’s most prolific spambots, or illegal networks of virus-infected computers that send spam.

The ruling provided a peek into the shrouded world of the Viagra-spam industry, a multimillion-dollar illegal enterprise with tentacles stretching from Russia to India. Around the world every day, millions of people open their e-mail in-boxes to find invitations to buy Viagra or some other drug, potion or device to enhance sexual performance.

Who sends these notes and how they make money had remained a mystery to most recipients. The court put names and faces to a shadowy global network of infected computers known outside Russia as Festi and inside the country as Topol-Mailer, named after an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Topol-M. It was powerful enough to generate, at times, up to a third of all spam e-mail messages circulating globally.

Prosecutors say Mr. Artimovich was one of two principal programmers who controlled the network of infected computers in a group that included a former signals intelligence officer in the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B.

Once they control the virus-infected computers, they are able to use software embedded on home and business computers to send persistent e-mails. The owner of an infected computer usually never knows the PC has been compromised.

More often than not these days, those infected computers are in India, Brazil and other developing countries where users cannot afford virus protection. But the high-end programming of viruses often takes place in Russia.

While the business model has been well understood â€" it was the subject of an extensive study by the University of California, San Diego â€" the individuals behind one of the largest spam gangs using it have largely avoided official scrutiny, until recently.

The Tushino Court in Moscow convicted two people of designing and controlling the Festi botnet, and two others of paying for its services, but none of them specifically of distributing spam. Instead, the court convicted the group of using the Festi network in 2010 to turn thousands of browsers simultaneously to the Web page of the online payment system of Aeroflot, the Russian national airline, crashing it in what is known as a distributed denial of service attack.

The spambot problem has vexed Western law enforcement officials, who complain the Russians ignore losses to global businesses that pay about $6 billion annually for spam filters, and to companies like Pfizer for sales lost to counterfeit pills.

Computer security experts have long been intrigued by the possibility that the Russian government has turned to so-called black hat hackers for political tasks in exchange offering protection from prosecution. But any direct evidence has been lacking, though the Festi case adds to the circumstantial evidence.

Russian authorities deny creating or turning a blind eye to botnets used to attack the Web sites of dissidents, or banks and government institutions in neighboring countries like Estonia or Georgia.

Valery V. Yaschenko, a deputy director of the Kremlin-linked Institute for Problems of Information Security, said the Russian government “condemns the practice of using strangers’ computers for attacks, or for any reason.”

For years, spam has been a very good business for Russian criminal gangs. An estimated $60 million a year is pulled in through these networks. Despite the Russian prosecutors’ victory this summer, similar networks remain active as tools for fraud and hacker attacks. Computer security experts say that suggests either the wrong men were convicted or the controlling codes were passed to somebody else.

Stefan Savage, a professor in the systems and networking group at the University of California, San Diego, studied the Festi scheme, in part by making test purchases.

A version of this article appears in print on September 3, 2013, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: After an Online Attack, A Peek Into a Spam Den.

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