Google Nexus 4 back in stock soon, sales set to resume

Google appears to have a better handle on Nexus 4 supplies now, and will resume selling the unlocked Android smartphone at noon Pacific time today.

Android Central reports that Google has sent out e-mails about Nexus 4 availability. The LG-made smartphone, which costs $300 for an 8 GB model or $350 for a 16 GB model, went on sale November 13, but sold out of its initial stock within minutes. Meanwhile, T-Mobile's version of the Nexus 4, which costs $200 with a two-year contract, is back on sale right now. For people who managed to order the Nexus 4 on launch day, Google has been shipping the units in waves. On Monday, Google sent e-mailsto some customers, telling them that shipments will resume this week. So far, it has been a rocky launch for all of Google's new Nexus devices. The Nexus 10 tablet originally sold out within a few days of launch, as did the 3G version of the Nexus 7 tablet. Both tablets are now available for purchase again, but the 32 GB Nexus 10 has a one- to two-week shipping delay. Google hasn't disclosed sales figures for any of its devices, so it's unclear whether the company was simply overwhelmed by demand, or had other supply issues. However, Asus has said that the Nexus 7, which went on sale in July, is approaching 1 million sales per month, and the quick sell-out of other devices at least bodes well for Google. Although Google has struggled to sell Nexus devices online in the past, perhaps the idea of pure Android hardware, sold at competitive prices, is starting to catch on.

Nokia Lumia 900 4G Windows Phone, Black (AT&T)

Samsung galaxy S3 from Amazon

Research in Motion, Struggling, Ponders a Dim Future

After rejecting the idea of a sale for months, Research in Motion acknowledged on Tuesday that it was considering “strategic business model alternatives” — or in banker’s speak, RIM, which makes the BlackBerry, said it was pondering a potential deal for all or parts of the company.

But did it wait too long?

A year ago, RIM, a Canadian company, became the subject of takeover rumors, after Google’s $12.5 billion deal for Motorola Mobility. Then, analysts believed that RIM would draw interest from Microsoft, Amazon.com or any number of Chinese phone manufacturers who could afford what would have been a pricey deal.
The company’s executives rebuffed the idea, arguing that RIM was on the verge of a turnaround. New phones were coming that combined touch-screens with BlackBerry’s e-mail and security features. And the PlayBook, with an industrial-strength operating system, could stand toe to toe with the iPad.

Facebook Tries, Tries Again on a Smartphone

Can a software company build its own smartphone? We may find out soon.

This past week, Google completed its acquisition of the hardware maker Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, which could lead to the search giant’s making its own smartphone. But another software titan might be getting into the hardware game as well: Facebook.

Now, the company has been going deeper into the process, by expanding the group working on Buffy, and exploring other smartphone projects too, creating a team of seasoned hardware engineers who have built the devices before.

One engineer who formerly worked at Apple and worked on the iPhone said he had met with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, who then peppered him with questions about the inner workings of smartphones. It did not sound like idle intellectual curiosity, the engineer said; Mr. Zuckerberg asked about intricate details, including the types of chips used, he said. Another former Apple hardware engineer was recruited by a Facebook executive and was told about the company’s hardware explorations.

When asked Friday, Facebook did not deny or confirm that a project to build a smartphone existed, but pointed to a previous statement it gave to AllThingsD last year that said in part, “We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers.”


Mahesh Kumar A/Associated Press
For Facebook, the motivation is clear; as a newly public company, it must find new sources of revenue, and it fears being left behind in mobile, one of the most promising areas for growth.

“Mark is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms,” a Facebook employee said.

Facebook is going to great lengths to keep the phone project a secret, specifically not posting job listings on the company’s job Web site, but instead going door-to-door to find the right talent for the project.

But can a company that is wired as a social network learn how to build hardware? Mixing the cultures of hardware and software designers is akin to mixing oil and water. With the rare exception of Apple, other phone makers aren’t very good at this.

The biggest names in consumer electronics have struggled with phone hardware. Hewlett-Packard tried and failed. So did Dell. Sony has never done very well making phones.

“Building isn’t something you can just jump into,” explained Hugo Fiennes, a former Apple hardware manager for the first four iPhones who has since left Apple and is starting a new hardware company, Electric Imp. “You change the smallest thing on a smartphone and you can completely change how all the antennas work. You don’t learn this unless you’ve been doing it for a while.”

He added, “Going into the phone business is incredibly complex.”

Facebook also faces hurdles, often of its own making, on mobile. Twitter, for example, is fully integrated into the Apple iPhone and allows people to seamlessly send Twitter messages with photos or article links. Facebook, which has had a contentious relationship with Apple, is still not integrated into iOS.

One Facebook employee said the phone project had been rebooted several times because Facebook originally thought it could figure out hardware on its own. The company has since learned that it needed to bring in people with phone-making experience, several people said. So it is hiring hardware engineers to work with a phone manufacturer and design the shape, style and inner workings of a Facebook phone.

Despite the difficulties, Facebook seems well positioned in certain ways to enter the smartphone market. It already has an entire operating system complete with messaging, calendar, contacts and video, and an immense app store is on its way with thousands of highly popular apps. There’s also that billion-dollar camera app, in the form of Instagram.

If Facebook fails with its own team of engineers, it could buy a smartphone maker. The company took in $16 billion from its bumpy I.P.O. It could easily scoop up an infirm company like Research in Motion, which is valued at less than $6 billion, and drop a beautifully designed Facebook operating system on top of RIM’s phones. HTC, which is upset with Google for buying Motorola, is worth about $11.8 billion and becoming cheaper by the day.

Facebook would not necessarily challenge Apple if it entered the smartphone marketplace. Instead, it could be Facebook vs. Google, which makes the Android operating system, with both companies going after a huge number of buyers of lower-priced smartphones.

“When you offer an advertising-based phone, you’re targeting all the users on prepay that are budget-conscious of their communications costs,” said Carolina Milanesi, a vice president and analyst for the Gartner Group.

Ms. Milanesi said that at a mass market level, both companies could take the same approach as Amazon, offering low-cost hardware, like the Kindle, and subsidizing some of the costs through advertising.

After all, both Facebook and Google make their money through advertising. If the companies have the opportunity to continually put ads in front of people on a smartphone screen, you would think the only question left would be to pick the right ringtone that makes that ka-ching sound.

Employees of Facebook and several engineers who have been sought out by recruiters there, as well as people briefed on Facebook’s plans, say the company hopes to release its own smartphone by next year. These people spoke only on the condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their employment or relationships with Facebook.

The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said.

This would be Facebook’s third effort at building a smartphone, said one person briefed on the plans and one who was recruited. In 2010, the blog TechCrunch reported that Facebook was working on a smartphone. The project crumbled after the company realized the difficulties involved, according to people who had worked on it. The Web site AllThingsD reported last year that Facebook and HTC had entered a partnership to create a smartphone, code-named “Buffy,” which is still in the works.

37 Tech Shortcuts From the Experts

Fly through your daily tasks with these 37 proven productivity boosters.

Make Your Gmail Work for You


Your time is valuable. On the Gmail team, we work hard to offer a user ex­­perience that won't bog you down. But we also want to share some tips for be­­ing even more productive with Gmail.
Focus on search, not folders: Google was built on search, and we've aimed to bring that same search experience to Gmail. Studies show that users save time when they search for an email instead of categorizing it into a folder. In Gmail, you can quickly find the exact message you want by typing keywords into the search box, or you can rely on the program's search autocomplete to specify the attributes you want (try typing 'from:[sender]' or 'has photos').

Let Gmail do your filing for you: Instead of individually finding and filing messages, try a search in Gmail for a specific type of message (for example, all email messages 'from:craigslist.org'). Then select Filter messages like this from the 'More' drop-down menu to set up a filter that will automatically label, archive, delete, or “star” similar types of incoming messages.

Use Priority Inbox: If you receive a lot of email, use Gmail's Priority Inbox to automatically separate your important mail from the rest, based on various signals. We found that Priority Inbox users spend 43 percent more time reading important messages than unimportant ones, and that they spend 15 percent less time reading email overall than do Gmail users working without Priority Inbox.

Keep your contacts up-to-date: Nothing saps time like having to deal with bounced email messages or waiting for a reply to a message that you sent to an outdated email address. You can ensure that you have the latest and most accurate contact information by taking ad­­vantage of Gmail's new profile integration with Google+, which automatically brings any information that your contacts share with you through Google+ into your Contacts list in Gmail.


Create a Schedule for Your Distractions
Instead of reacting to various notifications--email alerts, incoming instant messages, Twitter messages, and other needy software on your machine--as they arrive, consider dedicating a few half-hour blocks of time during the day to distractions, and leave the rest for focused work. I use this strategy, which I first heard from Gina Trapani, when she was at Lifehacker.
To save time, the first thing I do after setting up a new PC or Mac is to disable all notifications for everything: pop-up windows, audible sounds, bouncing icons­--all of it, for every application, including calendar appointments, email messages, and instant messages. Every time those notifications fire, they pull my attention from whatever I'm working on­--and I can't instantaneously re­­focus my attention on my task.

Facebook Gold Rush: Fanfare vs. Realities

IT’S an old line on Wall Street: If you can get your hands on a hot new stock, you probably don’t want it.
This bit of Street wisdom came to mind last week, as Facebook went public amid so much fanfare.

The stock eked out a 23-cent gain on its Day 1, to $38.23. This suggests that many professional money managers viewed all the hype as just that. Whatever the long-term prospects of this company — an issue over which reasonable people reasonably disagree — the idea that small-time investors might get rich fast struck the pros as absurd.