>> Apple releases some impressive earnings despite the fact that Steve Jobs health continues to be an issue. Google Chat embeds videos and despite all of the technology that surrounds us, a new study shows that most people still prefer Post-its. It's Thursday, January 22, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get Loaded.
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>> We don't usually cover earnings here on Loaded, but I think Apple's are worth noting. The company was apparently one of the few that had a booming holiday season. In the quarter that ended on December 27, the company made $10.17 billion in revenue. They sold over 2 million computers, 22 million iPods and 4.3 million iPhones. So no matter what you think of them, you gotta be impressed by that. Speaking of Apple here at CNET, we are trying to be very tasteful about covering Steve Jobs' health. I'm not gonna speculate on why Jobs is taking a leave of absence, but the Securities and Exchange Commission may want more information. Regulators are looking into the issue to determine whether or not Apple misled investors about Jobs health. Jobs said that he was fine, but recovering from a hormonal imbalance in early January. Then a week later, Apple announced he was not so fine and would be taking a six-month leave. Of course his health is his private matter, but these things have a linear relationship with stock price unfortunately. I know we're all wondering how forthcoming Apple has been or has to be about this issue. My take is that it isn't ours to decide, but it is for the SEC and Sarbanes Oxley to decide, so we'll see. Microsoft started selling music and videos through MSN Mobile in the U.K. This is the first time Microsoft has offered music and videos through the service which already offers e-mail, news, search and weather. There are over 1 million tracks, 25,000 ringtones and 10,000 music videos all from the big four labels. This is meant to compete with Apple's iTunes and Nokia's Comes with Music and pricing is about the same, 1 pound 50 pence for full tracks, 3 pounds for ringtones and 2 pounds for music videos. The days of commercial-free radio over at Pandora are over. The company will now play 15-second ads occasionally between songs.
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>> I'm not sure what occasionally means, but I'm assuming that won't be too overwhelming. Poor Pandora is still battling exorbitant royalty fees, so they have to do something to make money and a 15-second ad every few songs is really not all that inconvenient. Unless of course you're trying to bust a move to the music then it can be a real drag. Last July we reported that Flickr would be working with Getty to pay certain users for their images in order to archive them in the Getty albums. That partnership is starting to come to fruition now. Yahoo says that they've sent out invites to users this week to sell their rights to their images. Funny I didn't get one. The Flickr collection of photos will come to the Getty collection in March. Invitations are just starting to roll out, so if you didn't get one be patient it may have been lost in the mail. AOL Mail has made an attempt to integrate Gmail and Yahoo Mail into its mail pages, but it's not quite a full integration. A plug-in lets you see your Gmail and Yahoo Mail inboxes, but you can't open the e-mail and reply to it within the AOL mail page. If you click on an e-mail from Yahoo for instance, it launches your Yahoo Mail in another window or tab. But isn't the point of integration that you don't have to have more than one window or tab open? Anyway, the plug-in also lets you monitor the usual widgety infos: stocks, news, radio, messenger, etcetera. Google has added the ability to embed YouTube videos straight into chat. They're calling this YouTube and Google video previews. If you send or receive a link to a YouTube video while you're in chat the video will play right there in the chat window, so you don't have to click away to watch. I'm not really sure if this is more or less distracting. Over in China, censorship is considered super fun, so fun in fact that the government is extending its crusade of censoring the Web to censoring mobile devices. The Chinese Ministry of Public Service, the Ministry of Culture and five other government offices released a report that said we will incorporate lewd messages spread via mobile phones into the crackdown. To those of us who don't live in China this seems absurd, but for anyone who does live in China, this is a real concern. Over 40 people have already been detained for disseminating inappropriate adult content on the Web. Google and Baidu were being accused of serving this content and they're under fire too. This is not the last we've heard of this. I know a good number of you still use your landlines at home because you've written to me about it, but those people are slowly becoming outnumbered. A new study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that spending on cell phone services has exceeded spending on home landlines for the first time. Last fall we reported on a study by Nielsen that said that 17 percent of households don't even have a landline anymore -- my household included. So, I know you love your home phone and all, but don't get too attached to it, you're gonna get rid of it sooner or later mark my words. There are about a thousand ways to keep track of notes and to-do list online. Still, most people insist on using Post-its. A study out of MIT found that most office workers still put pen to paper on a regular basis despite the fact that we're all surrounded by technology that could make the Post-it obsolete. A group of researchers found that people still operate with what they call information scraps because they're accessible, easy and take advantage of the brain's facility to remember an objects location in a three-dimensional world. They collected and read over 500 notes from 2 dozens office workers and found that people were most likely to use low-tech note-taking methods for things like to-do list and shopping list. So I guess I can stop complaining that the iPhone doesn't have a to-do list if I'm just gonna use a Post-it anyway. Those are all your headlines for today. Before we go I wanna wish a happy birthday to Alexander, Abimelek, Al, Ulrich and Stephen [assumed spellings]. Have a good weekend everyone. I will see you on Monday or I'll see you tomorrow on Buzz Out Loud. In case you didn't know, I'm now the third host of Buzz Out Loud on a daily basis, so watch on us live everyday at 1:30 PM Eastern, 10:30AM Pacific at watchbol.com or listen later at bol.cnet.com or just subscribe to our podcast feed. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been Loaded.
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