Internet Pioneer RealNetworks Seeks Revival

SEATTLE â€" When a ground-breaking product called RealPlayer was released in its earliest form in 1995, Steven P. Jobs had yet to return to Apple, Google’s future founders had only just met and Mark Zuckerberg was 10 years old.

Almost two decades later, RealPlayer, which practically invented the category of streaming audio and video over the Internet, is not gone, but it is largely forgotten. The same might be said for the pioneering company that created the software, RealNetworks, which helped midwife the Internet into its heady commercial phase.

Now RealNetworks says it has reinvented its venerable software as a cloud service that will make it easier to privately share personal videos among mobile devices, television sets and computers. The change is a test of whether RealNetworks can avoid the tar pits by returning to a product that put it on the map in the first place.

“If we’re successful in this, we’ll make a successful company that could be even more successful than Real has been in the past,” Rob Glaser, the founder of RealNetworks, said in a recent interview.

The Internet is not generous to companies seeking rebirth. There are precious few examples of early online businesses losing their way and then finding it again â€" eBay and Priceline.com are two of them. Many more dot-coms vanished (Webvan, Kozmo, Excite@Home) or were absorbed into bigger companies before gradually fading away (Netscape).

RealNetworks was nearly wiped out after the dot-com bubble burst, when many of the companies that were buying its software to stream radio, sports matches and other events disappeared. It managed to hang on, winning a hefty antitrust settlement from Microsoft that padded its bank account. It got into a smorgasbord of new businesses, including subscription music, casual games and ringtones for mobile phones.

But those businesses fizzled, too, as RealNetworks failed to keep up with changing technology and tastes, including the growth of smartphones and a preference for free games that support themselves with the sales of virtual goods. Mr. Glaser, who stepped down as chief executive of RealNetworks in 2009, returned to lead the company in July of last year.

“When the board asked me to step in, we had multiple challenges to get on the right side of history,” Mr. Glaser said.

When he got back to the company, RealPlayer was being milked as a cash cow, supported by advertising and fees from companies like Google that paid to have their software bundled with it, Mr. Glaser said. But the company had invested little in it, not bothering to make a version for Apple’s iOS devices, for example.

RealPlayer has largely been overshadowed by other software for managing music and video collections on computers, as well as services like Spotify and Netflix that eliminate the need to store media locally. But the software still has 25 million active users a month, about two-thirds of them outside North America, according to the company.

With its new service, RealPlayer Cloud, the company is seeking to eliminate the hassles that can make sharing personal videos a challenge. Incompatible video formats on different devices can be a problem when sharing movies shot on smartphones. Stingy limits on the size of clips that can be sent via e-mail or text message are another.

Uploading clips to YouTube is a possible solution, though people need to figure out how to create a private channel for family and friends if they don’t want everyone to see their videos.

The RealNetworks offering lets people upload videos they shoot on their tablets, smartphones and GoPro cameras to an online service and then share them privately with others. The company is making apps available for the service so that it works on Android devices, iOS devices, computers and Roku set-top boxes, with a version under development for Google’s Chromecast media player.

It’s borrowing from the playbook of Dropbox and others by giving people two gigabytes of free storage for their movies and charging them if they want more space, with plans from $4.99 a month for 25 gigabytes to $30 a month for 300 gigabytes.

Mr. Glaser is technically the interim chief executive of RealNetworks, but he said he intends to stay at the company until his plan for reviving it begins to bear fruit. He said there is no active search by the board for a replacement for him as far as he knows.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Mr. Glaser said. “Right now we’re in the middle of a turnaround.”

Internet Pioneer RealNetworks Seeks Revival

SEATTLE â€" When a ground-breaking product called RealPlayer was released in its earliest form in 1995, Steven P. Jobs had yet to return to Apple, Google’s future founders had only just met and Mark Zuckerberg was 10 years old.

Almost two decades later, RealPlayer, which practically invented the category of streaming audio and video over the Internet, is not gone, but it is largely forgotten. The same might be said for the pioneering company that created the software, RealNetworks, which helped midwife the Internet into its heady commercial phase.

Now RealNetworks says it has reinvented its venerable software as a cloud service that will make it easier to privately share personal videos among mobile devices, television sets and computers. The change is a test of whether RealNetworks can avoid the tar pits by returning to a product that put it on the map in the first place.

“If we’re successful in this, we’ll make a successful company that could be even more successful than Real has been in the past,” Rob Glaser, the founder of RealNetworks, said in a recent interview.

The Internet is not generous to companies seeking rebirth. There are precious few examples of early online businesses losing their way and then finding it again â€" eBay and Priceline.com are two of them. Many more dot-coms vanished (Webvan, Kozmo, Excite@Home) or were absorbed into bigger companies before gradually fading away (Netscape).

RealNetworks was nearly wiped out after the dot-com bubble burst, when many of the companies that were buying its software to stream radio, sports matches and other events disappeared. It managed to hang on, winning a hefty antitrust settlement from Microsoft that padded its bank account. It got into a smorgasbord of new businesses, including subscription music, casual games and ringtones for mobile phones.

But those businesses fizzled, too, as RealNetworks failed to keep up with changing technology and tastes, including the growth of smartphones and a preference for free games that support themselves with the sales of virtual goods. Mr. Glaser, who stepped down as chief executive of RealNetworks in 2009, returned to lead the company in July of last year.

“When the board asked me to step in, we had multiple challenges to get on the right side of history,” Mr. Glaser said.

When he got back to the company, RealPlayer was being milked as a cash cow, supported by advertising and fees from companies like Google that paid to have their software bundled with it, Mr. Glaser said. But the company had invested little in it, not bothering to make a version for Apple’s iOS devices, for example.

RealPlayer has largely been overshadowed by other software for managing music and video collections on computers, as well as services like Spotify and Netflix that eliminate the need to store media locally. But the software still has 25 million active users a month, about two-thirds of them outside North America, according to the company.

With its new service, RealPlayer Cloud, the company is seeking to eliminate the hassles that can make sharing personal videos a challenge. Incompatible video formats on different devices can be a problem when sharing movies shot on smartphones. Stingy limits on the size of clips that can be sent via e-mail or text message are another.

Uploading clips to YouTube is a possible solution, though people need to figure out how to create a private channel for family and friends if they don’t want everyone to see their videos.

The RealNetworks offering lets people upload videos they shoot on their tablets, smartphones and GoPro cameras to an online service and then share them privately with others. The company is making apps available for the service so that it works on Android devices, iOS devices, computers and Roku set-top boxes, with a version under development for Google’s Chromecast media player.

It’s borrowing from the playbook of Dropbox and others by giving people two gigabytes of free storage for their movies and charging them if they want more space, with plans from $4.99 a month for 25 gigabytes to $30 a month for 300 gigabytes.

Mr. Glaser is technically the interim chief executive of RealNetworks, but he said he intends to stay at the company until his plan for reviving it begins to bear fruit. He said there is no active search by the board for a replacement for him as far as he knows.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Mr. Glaser said. “Right now we’re in the middle of a turnaround.”

Today’s Scuttlebot: Zuckerberg in a Suit, and Claims of an iPhone Fingerprint Scanner Hack

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Remote Controls, Without the AAA Batteries

Smartphones, tablets and other portable devices that need electricity rely on batteries that use a chemical reaction. But Maxwell Technologies, a company in San Diego, announced Tuesday that it was providing devices for television remote controls that store electricity without chemicals.

The devices, called ultracapacitors, are a little smaller than the two AAA batteries they will replace. They can recharge within minutes and have a life span that will probably outlast the remote control, said Michael W. Sund, a spokesman for the company.

Maxwell said it was approached by Celadon, a company that makes remote controls for set-top boxes, with a request for a power system that could work with a remote control.

Ultracapacitors are used in many devices, particularly in manufacturing, but they have only pushed out bursts of energy, and basic storage has remained in the chemical battery. The ultracapacitors store energy by putting an electric charge â€" positive or negative, on plates that are separated by an insulator.

Engineers have experimented with the use of capacitors in hybrid and electric cars, where they could provide energy for quick acceleration and recapture the energy generated when a car slows down. Maxwell already sells giant capacitors for use in hybrid transit buses that need to capture energy when they come to a stop. The capacitors in the buses also deliver energy to help get the wheels moving.

But using capacitors to provide a steady flow of energy is something new. Still, like other capacitors, the new ones can be recharged quickly. The remote control can recharge in five minutes and run for many hours, maybe even days, depending on how often it is used to change channels, Mr. Sund said. And unlike the lithium-ion batteries used in phones, laptops and, now cars, capacitors do not lose storage space with age.

“The speed of charge is an advantage,” Mr. Sund said. “If you forget to plug it in, it’s just a few minutes.”

The Energy Department’s Advanced Research Project Administration - Energy, an energy version of the better-known Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is enthusiastic about capacitors, and is financing several projects that use it.

Comparing a capacitors’ energy storage characteristics to those of a chemical battery is a bit like comparing the water storage capability of a pitcher with that of a roll of paper towels. A paper towel, like a chemical battery, takes a little time to soak up the water and never quite gives it all back â€" and over time, its ability to store water breaks down. The pitcher can be repeatedly filled quickly and emptied quickly or slowly.

So far, no one can build a capacitor that meets the requirements of a smartphone, Mr. Sund said. But his company is working on one that would be an adjunct to a smartphone battery, providing energy for the camera flash, a weak spot in current smartphones.

And more capable capacitors are on the way. Maxwell uses a layer of carbon on an aluminum substrate, where the charged particles can be stored. But researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, are working on a model that uses a single layer of carbon atoms.

The Science Author Clive Thompson Does Not Think Tech Is Ruining Your Mind

Count Clive Thompson as someone who does not believe Google is dulling our ability to memorize things.

Mr. Thompson is a science and technology writer who wrote the new book, “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.” He is also an occasional contributor to The New York Times.

With science as its backbone, Mr. Thompson’s book argues that the current transformation of society into the digital age is making us more intelligent, not the other way around. The following is an edited interview:

Q. Do you really think technology is making us smarter?
A. Yes, I do. I think basically we’re able to think more socially. There is something about the ability to externalize our thoughts and compare them with other people in a public way that is really transformative for the average person.

Q. You talk a lot about memory in your book. Are we augmenting our memories with computers, or are we replacing them?
A. I would say we are augmenting them. When I started the book I was genuinely worried that I was losing my memory to Google, but the more I studied the way that everyday memory works, the more I realized how much we already rely on other outside sources â€" books, Post-it notes, etc. â€" but also other people to remember things. We are social thinkers, and we are also social rememberers, we use our co-workers, our partners and our friends to help us retrieve the details about things that they they are better at remembering than we are. And they’ve used us in the same way. Memory has always been social. Now we’re using search engines and computers to augment our memories, too.

Q. You’ve write a lot about “ambient awareness.” What does that actually mean?
Ambient awareness is the experience of knowing what’s going on in the lives of other people â€" what they’re thinking about, what they’re doing, what they’re looking at â€" by paying attention to the small stray status messages that people are putting online. We’re now able to stitch together these fantastic details and mental maps of what is going on in other people’s lives.

Q. But critics say all of these details are just noise. Aren’t they?
A. It’s often really misunderstood because social critics are often pointing at an insignificant tweet and saying look at how trivial and silly this is, but ambient awareness happens in aggregate while you follow someone for a year or two, and that’s when these insignificant tweets add up to give us meaning. We use these tools over a long period of time and we develop a deep ESP-like sense of the intellectual and emotional lives of the people we care about.

Q. You’re married to Emily Nussbaum, the television critic for The New Yorker. Is your house just a series of blaring screens, iPads and smartphones?
A. Probably no more than any other families, no. The one thing that might be a little different is that Emily and I are really avid communicators via text messaging and instant messenger. So there are times I might be working upstairs and she’s downstairs and I’ll strike up an instant messenger conversation with her (because she’s watching TV), and we’ll just carry on that conversation on for a couple of hours.

Q. How do you control the amount of time your children get to use screens in the house?
A. I usually say everything in moderation. This advice hasn’t changed since the ancient Greeks. The things kids can do on screens can be really delightful â€" if they are age appropriate. But no, they shouldn’t spend all their time on a screen, they should split up their time doing multiple, different things. It’s not good for adults either to spend all their days on screens. I talk about cognitive diversity in the book, if you grant that argument that these new technologies help us think in new ways, then the old ways are still useful also, like going for a walk, or writing with a pencil.

Q. You talk about “tip-of-the-tongue syndrome” in your book. What is that, and how is it affected by technology?
A. Tip-of-the-tongue syndrome is when people almost remember something but need a computer, or someone else, to help them find it. The problem is, our brains have always been terrible at remembering details. They were like that way before the Internet came along. We’re very good at remember meaning, but we constantly mess up the details. One of the ways we’ve always resolved tip-of-the-tongue was by using other people. Now we have machines that help us resolve tip-of-the-tongue.

Q. You’re very bullish on technology, so if you could only take one piece of technology with you on a deserted island, what would it be?
A. I would probably take an e-reader loaded down with a gazillion books. (Making the assumption it has a solar ray so I can power that e-reader.) I am frankly really excited that modern technology allows us to read so many books in the way it does now. That was the dream of H. G. Wells and other science fiction writers, that all of knowledge could exist on a single device â€" which it does now. But, if I couldn’t bring electronics with me to my deserted island, I’d probably bring penicillin.

Israeli Diplomats Mock Iran’s President Online

On a day when President Obama told delegates at the United Nations that he welcomed the opportunity posed by diplomatic overtures from Iran’s new president, Israeli diplomats in Washington sounded a very different note online, mocking the moderate cleric as scarcely different from his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A message posted on the official Twitter page of the Israeli Embassy on Tuesday morning drew attention to a parody LinkedIn account for President Hassan Rouhani. The mock résumé of Mr. Rouhani’s career, filled with sarcastic asides, described him as “President of Iran, Expert Salesman, PR Professional, Nuclear Proliferation Advocate.”

How would Iran Pres. Rouhani’s #LinkedIn look? We thought to highlight his skills pre-#UNGA http://t.co/bw7j9II8rU http://t.co/qu1SC6uLRJ

â€" Embassy of Israel (@IsraelinUSA) 24 Sep 13

Under the heading, Skills and Experience, the fake LinkedIn page posted on the embassy’s Web site included “International Sales,” “Deceptive Trade Practices,” “Nuclear Weapons,” “Twitter,” “Public Relations” and “Illusion” in a long list.

A summary of the fake Mr. Rouhani’s experience, written in the straw man’s name, boasted: “Since my election as president of Iran in 2013, I have developed and executed an unprecedented PR campaign for the government of Iran. Through a series of statements, tweets, op-eds and smiles I have re-branded the human-rights-suppressing, Ayatollah-led regime as moderate and a source of hope among the international community.”

The satirical pitch concluded, “If you’re looking for a persuasive communications expert and master salesman capable of making almost anything believable, I’m your man.”

The embassy’s attempt to take some of the shine off the new administration’s image came as Mr. Rouhani’s Twitter-savvy foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, suggested on the social network that his talks this week with foreign ministers of nations concerned about Iran’s nuclear program could produce a breakthrough.

we have a historic opportunity to resolve the nuclear issue. 5+1 needs to adjust its posture commensurate with the new Iranian approach.

â€" Javad Zarif (@JZarif) 24 Sep 13

Some hours later, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israeli diplomats in New York would not be present to listen to the new Iranian president’s address, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

PM Netanyahu has instructed the Israeli mission to the UN not to attend the Iranian president’s speech at the General Assembly.

â€" Ofir Gendelman (@ofirgendelman) 24 Sep 13

Some of the Victims of the Attack in Kenya

Ross Langdon giving a speech during a TED conference.

As our colleagues in Kenya reported, the government has said 67 people were killed in the attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi and the standoff that followed, and 175 have been injured. But the Kenyan Red Cross has said a further 51 people were listed as missing, so the death toll could be higher. It also said there were four unidentified bodies in the mortuary.

Names of the victims have been trickling out in the past few days. One of them was Ross Langdon, an Australian architect who spoke at a recent TED conference, describing his life as a child growing up in Tasmania in a tent “in a lush valley by a river” and the inspiration it had on his work as an architect in Africa.

“I thought it might be better to be like a chameleon - able to adapt and change and blend with our environment rather than conquer it,” he said.
The architectural firm where he worked, Regional Associates, said:

We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss our friend and colleague Ross Langdon and his partner Elif Yavuz.
Profoundly talented and full of life, Ross enriched the lives of all those around him. Ross’s leadership on projects throughout East-Africa was inspirational, and he will be will be very, very sorely missed by us all. Our deepest condolences and thoughts are with Ross and Elif’s families at this very difficult time.

On Saturday, the day that the attack started, Mr. Langdon was at the mall with Ms. Yavuz, who was expecting their first child. Ms. Yavuz worked with the Clinton Foundation, which posted a statement by former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea.

We were shocked and terribly saddened to learn of the death of Elif Yavuz in the senseless attacks in Nairobi. Elif devoted her life to helping others, particularly people in developing countries suffering from malaria and HIV/AIDS. She had originally worked with our Health Access Initiative during her doctoral studies, and we were so pleased that she had recently rejoined us as a senior vaccines researcher based in Tanzania. Elif was brilliant, dedicated, and deeply admired by her colleagues, who will miss her terribly. On behalf of the entire Clinton Foundation, we send our heartfelt condolences and prayers to Elif’s family and her many friends throughout the world.

In a statement, the United States Agency for International Development said Ruhila Adatia-Sood, the wife of Ketan Sood, a Foreign Service national at the agency’s mission in Nairobi, had been  killed in the attack. Ms. Adatia-Sood was several months pregnant. “Ruhila was a popular radio and TV personality, who was known throughout Kenya for her passion, vibrancy, and gift for making people smile,” the statement said.

On Ms. Adatia-Sood’s Twitter account, she posted Instagram photographs of herself apparently posing with friends and fans. On East FM’s Kiss TV, a recent video shows her presenting programs on chefs.

Ruhila Adatia-Sood presents an East FM program posted 2 months ago.

As my colleague Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura reports from London, the militants specifically targeted non-Muslims, and at least 18 foreigners were among the dead, including six Britons, according to the British Foreign Office. Citizens from France, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, India, Ghana, South Africa, and China, were also killed, according to The Associated Press, which reported the names and profiles of some of the other victims.

The Daily Telegraph quoted a British businessman, Louis Bawa, who confirmed the deaths of his daughter Jenah, 8, and his wife Zahira, as saying his “heart just stopped” when he was asked to identify them from photographs of victims taken at the mall. “The people who did this, they are vigilantes, they are animals,” he told the newspaper. “They are using religion as an excuse to kill people. Zahira and Jenah were Muslims, but these animals just shot them the same as all of the others.”

He said he had spoken to his daughter last week and promised “to buy her any present in the world” if she did well on her exams. She told him to “start saving up” because she wanted him to buy her a pony and said “she was going to work very hard.” Jenah’s 12-year-old cousin, Ajay Bawa, said, “I don’t understand how people can kill 8- and 9-year-olds.”

The Ghanaian poet Kofi Awoonor was also killed in the attack as my colleague Adam Nossiter reported on Monday.

Elance Pairs Hunt For Temp Work With Cloud Computing

Cloud computing does not move computing power to small phones and big data centers. It is rearranging how we allocate work â€" maybe to a state of permanent, temporary work, for the mostly nontechnical ranks of the work force.

On Tuesday Elance, an online service for hiring temporary workers, announced a service that enables companies to hire, manage and pay freelance workers in a virtual private environment. Trusted consultants, designers, programmers and other freelancers can be cataloged and called upon as needed, and paid through the same network.

“More and more of the U.S. work force is independent and going online,” said Fabio Rosati, the chief executive of Elance. “We want to make it so you can see who your best workers are through profiles and history, then check their availability, hire them with a couple of clicks, then pay them securely.”

Companies like Elance, ODesk, and Freelancer.com have long provided a means for people and companies to seek each other across the globe. For the most part, companies use their cloud-based service to post jobs publicly, indicating their needs and possibly getting more applicants than they wanted.

Judging from the Web sites, this kind of work, which gives workers more flexibility at the price of less stability, falls mostly to the more humanities-oriented tasks. Job categories on all three of the major sites include design, search engine optimization and marketing, and (gulp) article writing. Where there are programming jobs, they are usually less-technical tasks like Web site development and data entry.

Under the new system, called the Private Talent Cloud, companies will pay Elance a fee to have a closed network of trusted freelancers, based on factors including previous jobs they’ve done and how other employees felt they performed.

The financial Web site Motley Fool uses the service to manage a group of some 600 writers and core employees. Specialties the writers have, along with their availability, are posted. Other companies have used the service during its development phase, Mr. Rosati said, to hire graphic designers, and marketing talent. In most cases Elance manages the payment.

Elance will also recommend other outsiders who might be good for new tasks, and, if a company wishes, it will post jobs in the larger community. New workers may be subject to background checks or have to sign guidelines of behavior in order to be admitted into a private talent cloud.

This may all sound a little like a cloud-computing cross between Facebook and a hiring boss stopped his pickup truck in front of hungry day workers. More likely, it’s another sign of change in a world where information is flying fast. Companies are competing in new areas faster than ever before, and no one seems to want a long-term relationship if they can avoid it.

That means that corporate work is more likely to come in bursts, and teams for projects are likely to grow and shrink quickly, adding and losing different skills. Oracle and Workday have spent big on talent spotting and recruitment. Higher up, LinkedIn increases the range of people a company can look at for mostly full-time jobs, while Task Rabbit and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk offer lower-paid, very short-term positions.

Elsewhere, companies like Quip and Box have introduced word processing products that stress fast collaboration. New kinds of office design, with blank surfaces that can be reconfigured to any need, are another symptom of the trend.

Mr. Rosati said that what his Mountain View, Calif., company does is a benefit to the economy. The average hourly wage on Elance, he said, is $28, and in the second quarter of this year that amount grew by 5 percent from a year earlier, or 10 times faster than overall wage growth in the U.S. There is no way to check those figures, as Elance is privately held.

“This is mostly for accretive, fractional work that probably wouldn’t get done if you couldn’t find people fast,” he said. “There are a lot of jobs now that only exist because a fractional work force â€" a retiree in Florida, or someone far from a city in North Dakota â€" can be reached online.”

Within two years, he predicted, half of U.S. companies would be employing these fractional workers. Elance itself consists of 300 people - 120 full time, and 180 freelance, running on its own private cloud.

The Human Behind a Favorite Spambot, Horse_eBooks

Dalton pacing up and down; another man enters; men shake

â€" Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) 26 Jul 12

For months, the Internet was captivated by the mysterious and strangely poetic Twitter spam account Horse_ebooks. The account spat out comical snippets of speech, including: “Unfortunately, as you probably already know, people,” and the occasional link to a Web site advertising e-books about horses. It was an Internet phenomenon that spawned legions of fans, who created Web comics and jewelry devoted to memorializing its bizarre existence and even led to a hunt to unearth the people behind it.

On Tuesday, Jacob Bakkila, a 29-year-old artist and Buzzfeed employee and one of the creators behind the account, stepped forward to claim the account as his own, which he described as a “conceptual but performative” art piece.

Luckily, you know a lot about cars, nbsp;
buildings, gas stations, and cats, so you have

â€" Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) 27 Jul 12

As you might know, I am a full time Internet

â€" Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) 24 Feb 12

“The idea was to perform as a machine,” he said in an interview on Monday. Mr. Bakkila said he first came across the account in 2011 and reached out to its original owner, a Russian named Alexei Kouznetsov, to inquire about taking over the account. Mr. Kouznetsov agreed and Mr. Bakkila said he has been operating it himself for the last two years, since September 2011.

So how does one perform as a spam bot? Relentlessly and tirelessly, said Mr. Bakkila. “The goal was not to appropriate the account but to become the account,” he said.

He mimicked the activity of a spam account, even occasionally tweeting links to the equestrian electronics books that the account was originally set up to try to sell. To create the odd non sequitur that the account became known for, he searched for articles on weight loss, bodybuilding and other types of self-improvement and self-help and skimmed them for material that he could tweet out at random intervals.

Horse_ebooks is Mr. Bakkila’s primary presence on social media. He said he has a Facebook account but that it’s more like “a phone book.”

The two-year project culminates in an art installation on Tuesday in a gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Beginning at 10 a.m., Mr. Bakkila and his collaborator, Thomas Bender, will be taking phone calls from people who want to hear them read excerpts from the Horse_ebooks account. They will also be showing off another installations, an interactive video art piece called Bear Stearns Bravo.

Daily Report: Questions Arise From BlackBerry Buyout Offer

An offer to take BlackBerry private does not end the uncertainty surrounding the ailing smartphone maker, Ian Austen and David Gelles report.

BlackBerry said on Monday that it had signed a letter of intent from a group led by Fairfax Financial Holdings, a Canadian insurance and investment company, to pay shareholders $9 a share in cash to take the company private, pending a variety of conditions.

The $4.7 billion offer from Fairfax, which already owns about 10 percent of BlackBerry, is a powerful symbol of the phone maker’s decline. In June 2008 â€" a time when BlackBerrys defined smartphones â€" the company had a stock market value of $83 billion.

Any deal is far from done. Fairfax did not identify the other investors in its consortium, which is seeking financing. And while the offer could flush out potential rival offers, it is unclear who might be tempted to come forward, given the company’s uncertain prospects. Investors gave a muted endorsement on Monday, with BlackBerry shares rising 1 percent, to $8.82, but failing to reach the $9 bid price.

The offer came after the company announced on Friday that it expected to report a quarterly loss of nearly $1 billion, stemming largely from the failure of the BlackBerry 10 line of phones that were supposed to revive the company. BlackBerry also outlined plans to lay off about 40 percent of its already reduced work force, or around 4,500 people.

Sensing the opportunity to halt the fall in company’s stock prompted by that announcement, and the potential to kick off an auction, BlackBerry’s board seized on the offer, quickly signing a letter of intent. The particulars of the deal’s announcement came together in a matter of hours on Monday morning.