iPad 3 badly needed? Kindle Fire users reportedly growing.

A new data shows that the Amazon Kindle Fire is a popular device, can Apple stop the growth with the iPad 3?

The Amazon Kindle Fire is a popular tablet, and arguably the most popular Android tablet — and it looks like users are really the device to browse the web according to the latest data provided by online ad network Chitika.

Based on Chitika’s ad impressions from mid November to first week of December, online activity for the Amazon Kindle Fire is growing and massive growth came during the last week of November to first week of December. Apparently, the trend will continue if Kindle Fire users will use the tablet’s Silk Browser more, and second, if Amazon can sell more Kindle Fire tablets this month that will result to more Kindle Fire users that will access the web.

Kindle Fire is one of the cheapest tablets in the market right now, but it is also a powerful media device because Amazon’s own ecosystem is large and can accommodate all customers, from music lovers to mobile app buyers. However, analysts predict that Amazon is losing $3 to $10 per Kindle Fire, and one analyst said Amazon might be losing $50 which includes the shipping, labor, etc.

In return, Amazon will try to profit from Kindle Fire users by selling Amazon products like apps, music, cloud storage, e-books and more because the Kindle Fire is using a heavily customized Android Gingerbread version. Amazon’s new tablet strategy is obviously competing against Apple and its glorified iPad which also offers music, e-books, games and other media.

In related news, Apple is reportedly set to release the new iPad 3 in February of next year, the month of lovers (gift giving, the lovers edition). What’s with the February release? If you’re an avid reader of Apple news, you know that Apple loves April when it comes to the iPad. For example, the iPad 1 was released April 2010 and the iPad 2 was released in April 2011. So, iPad 3′s release date is in February?

If the new rumor is accurate, then it is highly possible that Apple is feeling the Kindle Fire’s heat and wants to protect its tablet market share. According to multiple data presented by research firms, Apple is still the most popular tablet PC vendor with nearly 75% of market share, while other tablets (Android, etc) folded and sharing the remaining market share.

And aside from the Kindle Fire, Apple is also facing retail-iation from Google Android courtesy of the new Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola and HTC are expected to use the new Android version next year to attract more tablet customers.

Sri Lanka opens its first highway

Since the war in Sri Lanka ended in 2009, the government has stepped up work on big infrastructure projects, which it says are the key to its future development. One of the most notable has just been given a grand opening: the island's first motorway, or expressway as it is known locally, leading from the capital's outskirts to the southern town of Galle.

The old road to Galle snakes its way through the southern Colombo suburbs.

The traffic crawls, with overloaded buses, motorbikes and motorised rickshaws stuffed full of bananas. Pedestrians criss-cross it. The road runs parallel to a railway and is lined with houses, shops and shacks most of the way south.

Now at last there is an alternative route. The E01 Expressway is the first motorway on this island, which is slightly smaller than Ireland in land area.

True, for now you still have to drive through the fairly congested eastern suburbs to get to it, but then you see the start of the motorway, with multicolored flags flying for its grand opening.

At the moment bulldozers still rumble around. A Chinese team is constructing one of the link roads that will make future access easier. But when you go through the toll plaza, paying between 400 and 2,000 Sri Lankan rupees depending on the type of vehicle, and you leave the congestion behind.

This road has cost $700m, the bulk of which has been funded with a Japanese government loan, with the rest coming from the Asian Development Bank and the Sri Lankan government.

Five thousand plots of land had to be taken over and the motorway was built by Japanese and Chinese contractors at a ratio of two to one.

Learning curve

A road like this, with a speed limit of 100km per hour and restricted interchanges, is completely new for Sri Lanka. Within its first 24 hours, a minor accident on the motorway left two people injured.

So the government has been running media campaigns with basic instructions on things like stopping distances, the overtaking lane and the speed limit. "Do not reverse!" screams one TV advert, with a big red cross. "No U-turns", warns another.

There have been criticisms of the structure, notably from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Sri Lanka.

It says the lanes - two in each direction - are narrower than the international norm, and the hard shoulder or breakdown lane is considerably narrower (1.75m as opposed to 2.5m), which means the door on the driver's side cannot be opened once the car has stopped.

Being several kilometers inland, the new road slices through low hills. At the half-way point, a service area and filling station are almost complete.

Quicker commerce

After 95km the motorway ends and the driver rolls into the nearby town of Galle, with its 400-year-old fort and quaint streets that are a magnet for tourists.

Among the area's products are cinnamon, coconut, tea and rubber.

Work has started on the next two legs of the brand new motorway network, which will include a link to Colombo's airport. There are also plans to build motorways to the former war zones of the far east and north.

At the road's grand opening, President Rajapaksa said new high-speed roads would bridge the gaps among Sri Lankans and, he hoped, counter separatist tendencies that led to war in the past.

Already reunified thanks to the end of the war, with quicker journey times Sri Lanka will gradually feel as if it is shrinking, too.

Google Android 4.0 - Ice Cream Sandwich

Google's Ice Cream Sandwich, Android 4.0, is the biggest update the popular smartphone platform has received in more than a year. It adds dozens of features, changes and improves the interface, and makes much better use of the latest smartphone hardware. It may finally make Android tablets viable, too. At launch, though, it's missing a few things, most notably Flash and Facebook support, which mean that you may do well waiting a few months before scooping out some Ice Cream for yourself.

The New UI

The new Ice Cream Sandwich UI integrates elements from the Gingerbread phone and Honeycomb tablet UIs into, hopefully, a harmonious system which will work equally well on phones and tablets.

The look employs a lot of subtle shading, a lot of compositing, and a lot of depth, especially compared to the very flat screens in Gingerbread. Powerful GPUs seem to be assumed here, as screens and images almost always have multiple layers. But a generally spare design keeps it feeling like Android: functional, not showy.

The new lock screen shows the date, time, and your wallpaper. To unlock the phone, swipe right, or swipe left to jump directly to the camera. That takes you to one of five home screens, where you can place widgets or icons at will. You can now create folders on your home screens, and the folder layout is witty and smart: it shows the icons of various items in the folder, stacked. Four favorite icons, now customizable, stay at the bottom of every home screen.

The app drawer is still there, but now it's two-paned: you can flip between apps and a full-screen display of available widgets. Sliding between pages of apps, it looks like each one reveals the next under it. The multitasking interface borrows from Honeycomb: press a dedicated "multitasking" soft key, and thumbnails of the last several apps you've used ghost above the display. (There's that multi-layer compositing again.)

Android Users 80% More Valuable Than iPhone Users

In the Android vs. iPhone war for mobile supremacy, which operating system should advertisers look to target?  Online ad network Chitika looked at ad click rates across its network for the two devices and came to the conclusion that Android users are by far more valuable individually than iPhone users – people on the Android OS clicked on ads 81% more often than people on the iPhone.

 

Device	CTR
iPad	1.010%
iPhone	0.654%
Android	1.187%

Interestingly, iPad users are much more likely to click ads than their iPhone-using contemporaries.  This may be chalked up to the difference in display size.  Android devices, however, by and large have similar screens to the iPhone, and Chitika’s advertisements display the same on both devices.

As Android continues to grow in market share, it will be interesting to see how this figure changes.  For now, however, it is obvious that Android users should be high up on the list of targets for mobile advertisers.

You will always have a piece of my heart.

Never want this to go unsaid,
So here in this poem, is for it to be said.
There are no words to express how much you mean to me,
A son like you, I thought could never be.
Because the day you were born, I just knew,
God sent me a blessing and that was you. For this I thank Him every day, You are the true definition of a son, in every way.
It is because of you that my life has meaning,
Becoming a father has shown me a new sense of being.
I want you to know that you were the purpose of my life,
Out of everything I did - it was you that I did right.
Always remember that I know how much you care,
I can tell by the relationship that we share.
For a son like you there could be no other, And whether we are together or apart, Please do not ever forget - You will always have a piece of my heart.

SL Economy Booming - Source [Bloomberg]

Sri Lanka May Sell Rupee as Post-War Inflows Increase

Sri Lanka may sell its currency should it gain too much as foreign aid and investments flow into the country after the end of a 26-year civil war, central bank governor Nivard Cabraal said.

"The currency could appreciate when large amounts of money come in," Cabraal said in an interview in Colombo yesterday. "But we learnt some good lessons in 2005 post-tsunami that we shouldn't allow these conditions to drive the economy by itself and there has to be some kind of intervention."

Cabraal said excessive gains in the rupee could damage exports, which make up a third of the $32 billion economy and employ more than 2 million people in the island's tea plantations and textile factories. Millions of dollars of aid after a tsunami hit Sri Lanka on Dec. 26, 2004, increased demand for the rupee, strengthening the currency by 5.4 percent the following month and halving export growth from a year earlier.

"The near-term pressure appears to be toward appreciation of the rupee," said Anushka Shah, an economist at Citigroup Plc. in Mumbai. Buying dollars will also help "build foreign- exchange reserves."

The Lankan rupee has gained 2.5 percent to 114.85 against the U.S. dollar since May 16, when President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who have been fighting for a separate homeland for ethnic Tamils since 1983.

Very Comforting

Sri Lanka's benchmark stock index, the Colombo All-Share Index, has climbed 16 percent since the Tamil Tigers were defeated, taking its gains this year to 47 percent. The index rose 0.6 percent to 2,197.73 at 11:15 a.m. local time, paced by John Keells Holdings Plc., which has investments ranging from transportation to tea and tourism. John Keells has increased 41 percent since May 16.

Cabraal said foreign-exchange reserves increased by about $120 million in the past two weeks as overseas investors snapped up local shares on optimism of political stability returning to the Indian Ocean island nation.
"That has been very comforting to the foreign exchange situation," Cabraal said.

The nation's reserves more than halved in the six months from September to $1.4 billion as the global recession hurt export earnings, prompting Sri Lanka to start talks with the International Monetary Fund in March for a $1.9 billion bailout.

IMF Loan

Sri Lanka's overseas sales dropped 7.8 percent in March from a year earlier, falling for the fourth straight month. That's the longest period of declines since 2002.

Standard & Poor's said May 21 the timing and implementation of the IMF loan was "uncertain" and cut the island's rating outlook to negative from stable. S&P rates the nation's long- term foreign currency debt at 'B', five levels below the investment grade.

The IMF on May 21 said it is near an agreement to lend the money to Sri Lanka, clarifying its position a week after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. was reluctant to support an IMF loan to Sri Lanka given the escalation in the country's civil war.

"The IMF loan has been delayed because some countries have expressed concerns which are of a non-economic nature," Cabraal said. "The IMF charter doesn't allow for such issues to be raised in the provision of structural loans - this will set a bad precedent."

Civil War

Now that the war is over, foreign direct investments into Sri Lanka could quadruple to as much as $4 billion a year by 2012, according to Dhammika Perera, chairman of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka.

The last time Sri Lanka faced a huge inflow of foreign cash was when the tsunami struck the nation and killed more than 30,000 people.

The challenges the inflows may pose this time include higher inflationary pressures, Cabraal said.
"For the moment, inflation is benign and we expect it to touch zero percent by June," Cabraal said, adding that such a scenario would give him room to keep interest rates low and support economic expansion. He said the 3.3 percent increase in consumer prices in May from a year earlier, after a 2.9 percent gain in April, was a "blip."

Cabraal said the central bank will this month revise the nation's growth forecast for 2009, and may almost double it to 5 percent because of the increase in business confidence and as the liberation of rebel-occupied land boosts farm production.

"For a long time, every time someone spoke about Sri Lanka's economy, the response was if only not for this war," Cabraal said. "Today that has been removed and we have a tremendous new scope for economic development."

Hope......

Maybe the darkness inside me....
Can never be lightened...
Everything seem to take a long period..
even with hopes...
Thing doesn’t seem to changed much...
but I never stop believing..
That no matter how dark it may be...
no matter how cruel reality is..
I will always.. hope for miracle to happened